Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-167"

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"en.20041117.9.3-167"2
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". Mr President, every visitor to the Member State that Mr Barroso knows best learns that Portugal's national symbol represents the cockerel that got up from the dinner table and crowed to save the life of a condemned man. Four weeks ago, Mr President-elect, your rooster refused to crow. Tomorrow I believe it will. Mr Schulz, my Group may not agree with your assessment of individual Commissioners, but we acknowledge that you have sought a dialogue with Mr Barroso which respects the necessity and the inevitability of compromise. To the green and red banners of the permanent opposition, I would say this: there is no dignity or honour or even refusenik glamour in voting against an agreement on this Commission which respects Parliament's complaint within the constraints of the possible. Mr President-elect, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats is ready to give you and your Commission its support. On balance, Liberals and Democrats were satisfied with the performance of the new reshuffled Commission. Mr Piebalgs and Mr Kovács did well. Mr Frattini was soft on specifics, but sharp in general. He has the capacity to be an impressive Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, although he might need to disown much of the record of his patron in Rome in the process. This is a better Commission. I challenge anyone in this House to say otherwise. I challenge anyone to say that Parliament was not right to demand that you remake it. Liberals and Democrats stand by our approvals with the same conviction that set us against Mr Buttiglione. We were forced to define your college by its weakest link. That link has been replaced and today we acknowledge the strengths of the college. It has real talent and deep reserves of competence. Our Parliament is asked to do the work of scrutinising the Commission, but given only the rudest tools for the job. The Treaty gives Parliament the bluntest possible instrument; the heaviest possible sanction and nothing else. In political terms, the Treaty offers only the possibility of destroying the town in order to save it. A system of checks and balances that has no middle ground between the cosmetic and the crisis is not worthy of European government and for that reason the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe must attach a price to our support tomorrow. We expect that if, during your term, Parliament withdraws its confidence from any of your Commissioners, you will come before this House to address the failing. You will either defend that Commissioner on your personal authority or you will ask for a resignation. In July you wrote the principle of individual responsibility of Commissioners into your speeches. Well, today we want that promise in stone. The current framework agreement stresses that the Commission President will 'seriously consider' any such withdrawal of confidence. That is not enough. This House wants more than 'serious consideration' and we will not consider your Commission serious without it. For our part, we must now rise consistently to the challenge of critical partnership that we laid down a month ago. There has been too much talk of political retribution in this House; there have been too many attempts, here and elsewhere, to govern this process as if it were a sideshow of the internal politics of Parliament and not the selection of a European government."@en1
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