Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-012"
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"en.20040914.2.2-012"2
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"Mr President, Madam Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, let me, on behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, thank the President for his speech. It is, I think, clear that this House as a whole can endorse the broad outlines that you have sketched out, and we will support you in your effort to strengthen the hand of the European Parliament, in so far as we are able to do so.
One of the core points our President addressed – and this is something I welcome – was terrorism. Terrorism can never be justified, and we must fight it with all the strength and determination at our disposal.
Likewise, though, the need to fight terrorism must not mean that we jettison human rights. We have to value the life and dignity of a European as much as the life of a Palestinian; we have to affirm that the life of an American is worth as much as that of a Chechen and that of a Muslim as much as that of a Christian or a Jew.
That is why, necessary though it is to combat terrorism, we in this House – without regard to the ‘reasons of state’ that governments invoke – must always speak up for human rights throughout the world. Whether it is convenient for us or not, whether the regimes we are dealing with are left-wing or right-wing or of any other description, we must always defend human rights in the world without deferring to reasons of state.
I hope you will not mind if I conclude by saying something about the Members’ Statute. We want one, but the ball is now in the Council’s court. We have done our work; now it is the Council’s turn, and if the Council of Ministers does not want the matter to go any further, then it has only to say so. We have done our work, and we in the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats wish you, Mr President, every success in yours. If you stand up for Europe as a community – and I have no doubt that you will – then we will always be by your side.
The best of luck to you!
You spoke as the representative of what is one of the most important institutions in the European Union, if not the most important. Let me say, in the presence of the Vice-President of the Commission, that I very much regret – and this is not a criticism of the Dutch Presidency, but of the Council’s General Secretariat – that the Council is not present on this important day. That is something that will have to change.
In the past, too, we have heard Presidents of the Commission outline their strategic programmes, which are about making laws, and that is what Parliament and the Council of Ministers exist to do, yet even then the Council was not present! I call upon the General Secretariat of the Council to ensure in future that the Presidency of the Council is represented in this House, for that is the General Secretariat’s function – to ensure that the most important institutions are present.
You take up office, Mr President, at a time when we have Members from the twenty-five countries of the European Union here, and you were right to address the language issue. What distinguishes us is our commitment to Europe’s unity in diversity, and that is why we have all the languages of the European Union here in the European Parliament. I see the main task facing us – facing you as President and us in the groups – as being to have respect and high regard for each other and for all our national and personal backgrounds, whilst nonetheless being aware that, at the end of the day, we are, men and women, Europeans together, seeking to work together to make this Parliament stronger.
You spoke about our relationship with the Commission. Everyone here in this House knows that our group did, of course, support José Manuel Durão Barroso as President-designate of the Commission; that does not mean, however, that the healthy tension that exists between the Commission and Parliament has thereby been dissolved. Instead, even before the whole Commission gets our vote of confidence, we must get the President-designate of the Commission to make important concessions to us in this House as to how the European Parliament can be given greater powers in relation to the European Commission.
For that reason, our group has submitted a list of ten points that we want to see put into practice before we give the Commission as a whole our votes and put our trust in it. We want the Commission to consult with Parliament when considering how to formulate its strategic policy programme, we want the Commission to take the subsidiarity principle into account when proposing legislation, and we want this to result in a reduction in bureaucracy in Europe, with the Commission giving us prognoses in this regard when submitting its proposals for legislation. We also want to know what it is all going to cost.
You referred to REACH, which is not just about reshaping chemicals policy. That is something we will have to argue about. In essence, it is about us maintaining jobs in the European Union and creating new ones, and the European Union must not, through its own legislation, contribute to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, for example as a result of chemicals policy. That is why we must join together with the Council – which is why I find its absence regrettable – in getting the relationship between the environment and the economy right.
Let me tell you what our main task is. When we talk about Europe’s ability to compete, this is not something abstract to do with businesses; it has to do with workers in the European Union being in jobs and with businesses not taking themselves off to America or other parts of the world and the jobs being lost to Europe."@en1
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