Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-043"
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"en.20041117.3.3-043"2
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"Mr President, we are undoubtedly at a crucial moment in the development of the Union. Wherever we look, whether it is at the Lisbon Strategy, or the security question and the demand for greater police and judicial cooperation, or even this week's report of the Court of Auditors, we see time and again that Member States that talk about European cooperation do not put it into practice. We cannot continue with a system where Member States pick and choose which bits of decisions they are going to implement and when – and these are decisions they themselves have agreed.
This is undermining political support in the European Union. I hope that once we get a full-time President of the Council he or she will regard this as an absolute priority, but in the meantime, in order to keep the Lisbon process on track, the Commission should publish a regular annual scoreboard outlining which Member States have done what and when. We can then judge, name and shame the villains.
My colleagues Mr Désir and Mrs van den Berg have set out many of the key elements that we would like to see emphasised in the Lisbon Strategy. I would like to add to that the need for more active labour market policies at national level. We seem very happy to pay out money to keep people on the unemployment scrap heap, to pay people to be written off and marginalised, when we should be investing in helping them back into work. There is not enough emphasis on this, although it was originally in the Kok report and I hope will continue to be.
The President-in-Office said that Mr Barroso is to be applauded for drawing the appropriate lessons from last month's debate on the Commission. It is a pity that the same cannot be said about the Dutch presidency. Mrs Kroes undoubtedly has the experience and expertise that will be of benefit to the Commission, but given the concerns that are being raised it is wrong for her to retain the competition portfolio. Whenever she has to adjudicate in a controversial matter, rightly or wrongly her integrity is going to be called into question.
The presidency should act in the interests of the European Union, not from narrow national concerns. I fear that the Dutch presidency has failed in this respect."@en1
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