Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-213"

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"en.20041117.9.3-213"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-elect of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, you are aware of the deep attachment of the Italian delegation of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats towards the Barroso Commission. Therefore, since I consider this affair to be a story with a happy ending, I shall limit myself to some expressions of gratitude, albeit with some questions. My first and most heartfelt thanks is to you. You said you wanted to do what was necessary and sufficient to obtain the approval of Parliament. I have genuinely failed to understand why it has been necessary to replace Commissioner Buttiglione, but at any rate Italy has kept the justice portfolio and has an excellent Commissioner and Vice-President of the Commission. For me, that is more than sufficient. Many thanks are due to our friends in the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe: they have truly provided an interpretation for the bewildered Italian parliamentarians who have been debating the subject of conflict of interest for years. Thanks to the ineffable way in which they have fought their battle for the prerogatives of Parliament, we now know that conflict of interest is defended in this way, or rather is fought in this way: by pretending that there is no interest. When you evoke the monster Berlusconi from those benches, we know that it may be written Berlusconi but it is pronounced Kroes. Thanks also go to our friends in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. I have not quite understood why their opposition to the Barroso Commission should all of a sudden have disappeared. However, I believe that perhaps it is linked to the lack of action against the Hungarian Commissioner. For this I should above all thank the valiant leader of the Socialist group, but I shall not do so, because every time that someone from my side of the house speaks of the honourable Mr Shulz, he gets promoted to a higher office. I shall limit myself to asking one final question: does the concept of necessary and sufficient as expressed by you perhaps consist of depriving a Commissioner-designate of his freedom of expression and of thought? You said that democracy is half plus one, but perhaps democracy in this Parliament equals the whole minus one – the most wretched and most Catholic Mr Buttiglione."@en1

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