Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-188"
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"Mr President, I wanted to be brief, but should not want any brevity on my part to have given rise to any misunderstandings.
To Mr Méndez de Vigo, the first and distinguished speaker, I would like to say that there is obviously no ambiguity. Firstly, the Commission is fully committed to the draft Constitution, and I can testify that Mr Barnier, followed by Mr Vitorino, whom I assisted during the Council’s closing moments, really did do everything possible to bring it about. It will mark a very important step towards making this Union of ours more democratic and towards a whole series of advances, in which codecision, or rather the extension of Parliamentary codecision, is a major element.
It follows that there is a manifest commitment to the draft Constitution on the part of the Commission, and that there is no question of it not having an interest in the consultation that will result or in the consultations that will be held in the Member States. Quite simply, I tried to explain that the Commission had already undertaken to prepare documents that I believe have the dual merit of being very objective and of presenting the situation as it is now and as it will be once the draft Constitution has been ratified. All too often, in fact, the debate on how the EU should develop rather confuses matters, and it is not always very easy to distinguish what exists today from what will exist tomorrow, so we wanted the tools we provided to be practical, clear and operational, even though there is certainly room for their further improvement. I hope I have given an account of what the Commission has done about this.
I do not want there to be any doubt about the fact that funding is a problem. We did not allocate EUR 1.5 million to the preliminary draft Budget for 2005 in order to reduce the projects, but because, at the time the preliminary draft Budget was being drawn up, we were still too uncertain of the eventual outcome. In any case, we declared our intention of reviewing the situation with you in the course of the Budget procedure. The situation is clearer now, and we are ready to act on the basis of the appropriations that your House and the Council, represented by Mr Nicolaï, estimate will have to be set aside for this purpose. The Commission is imposing no restrictions in this respect. What does actually matter is that the necessary funds be used once the enterprise is underway. So let there be no misunderstandings on that front.
Nor let there be any misunderstanding of what I have said. We think that the Commission would be incapable, on its own, of devising an information campaign. While again thanking Mr Leinen, I would also like to stress the fact that we are agreed, in particular, on item 6 of the motion for a resolution, which states that the Council, the Commission and Parliament must prepare an appropriate campaign and a communications strategy, and that this necessitates a joint effort by all the parties. When stressing the need for a sufficiently confident and effective partnership with the Member States, I certainly do not mean that there should be, in certain Member States, campaigns that are not coordinated and are not harmonized with those of other Member States. The simple fact, which Mr Nicolaï has just explained, is that we have to take into account certain national aspects in order to be certain that our information campaign will be as effective as it needs to be. It is, then, the desire for effectiveness that motivates us, and the Commission must not be seen as any less interested in the joint effort towards winning the battle to keep the public properly informed.
It follows that one and all must take their share of responsibility; the Commission will entirely accept its own. If Mr Vitorino were here, he would say so forcefully. As Mr Nicolaï has just said, Mr Vitorino will be in Amsterdam, and we may hope that the meeting on 5 October will be productive, not only in terms of guidance for our joint information project for all Europe’s citizens – with information that will, let me repeat, be objective – but also perhaps in terms of that coordination for certain consultations for which many of you have rightly expressed a wish. It is indeed in our interests that what is becoming a body of European citizens should be able to be heard through consultations organised in the various Member States and through their coordination.
I will close, Mr President, by expressing the wish that this meeting in Amsterdam might be able to shed as much light as possible on what would make for an effective partnership between Parliament, the Council and the Commission in winning the battle on the information front; I would suggest that it would be objectivity and truthfulness, for I have confidence in Europe and am convinced that truthful information will be likely to win widespread public support."@en1
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