Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-22-Speech-4-062"
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"en.20040722.4.4-062"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I want to preface my remarks by saying this to Mr Barroso: we have had extensive discussions with you and have come to know you as someone whose personal integrity is beyond question.
... and only once, my decision would have been easier, but on this point you have been intransigent. So, we return to the question of whether you are the man to, for example, make the EU the equal of other great powers, whether they be economic or political, and you have yet to provide us with evidence that you are. For most of us, you are still one of those who organised the Azores summit.
Today, a number of Members belonging to my group will, for the most diverse reasons, express their confidence in you.
Let me make it quite clear, Mr Barroso, that the way in which these people have politicised your election has done you more harm than good.
Those members of our group who will express their confidence in you enjoy the group’s solidarity and respect, but the Socialist Group in the European Parliament cannot, today, give you a vote of confidence. I am sorry to have to say that but, should you win, you may well gain our confidence in the future.
I am here to present a decision, and it is one with which we have had difficulty. Our group has listened to you; yesterday and this morning we have put to you further questions in which we have set out our thinking about Europe’s future and the President of the Commission’s role in it. We listened to your answers and have discussed them, and the answers you gave today, in our group meeting this morning.
In the hearings, in my speech yesterday, and this morning too, we have put four crucial questions, to which we expect answers. Now we have to provide our own answers to them. Is José Durão Barroso the candidate who will strengthen the Commission, as an institution, in its relations with the Council, with the Heads of State or Government, with the other institutions? Secondly, is he the candidate to pursue a sustainable environmental policy, a sustainable economic policy, on the basis of fairness in world trade? Is he – and this was the third question – the candidate for whom we Social Democrats will be able to vote, because he, as President of the Commission, will contend for social cohesion as primary need for our society, something that is a crucial element in Socialist policy in Europe?
We have asked ourselves these three questions, and I will say something about the fourth at the end of my speech. To these three questions, our group has answered, ‘No’.
The fourth question was...
... whether José Manuel Durão Barroso is a candidate who can cause Europe’s values, first of all the values of multilateralism, in the face of a unilateralism motivated by self-interest. Mr Barroso, what I want to say to you on a personal level is this: if I had heard from your lips, even if only as an indication: ‘If the information I possess today had been available to me a year ago, I would perhaps have taken a different decision with regard to the war in Iraq.’ Even if you had only alluded to this ..."@en1
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