Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-010"
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"en.20050111.5.2-010"2
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".
Mr President, the enlargement of the European Union means we are having to upgrade from driving a minibus, capable of taking 15 passengers, to a full-sized bus, capable of taking 25, with some spare seats to take on new passengers in due course. This larger bus needs a stronger motor if we are not to slow down, and one that enables us to cross the difficult hills that lie on our path. If we are to have a stronger motor, we will also occasionally need stronger brakes – perhaps an emergency brake – and better safety features too, such as a safety belt on each seat. Since we are upgrading, we should also have more comfortable seats so that every passenger feels at home and comfortable in this bus. Also, while we are at it, why not have a geo-satellite positioning system so we always know exactly where we are on the roadmap and can better plan the journeys we want to take together by the most efficient and comfortable route? That is why we need a new set of rules for the European Union: a new Constitution to replace the current constitutional order and the set of overlapping Treaties.
In concrete terms this means a set of improvements that the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and your rapporteurs have identified as falling into four main categories. First, it means greater clarity as to what the Union is, how it works and functions. Under this heading one can identify a single Treaty instead of the several overlapping Treaties – a single, clearer document that spells out more clearly the objectives and the values of the Union and its competences, what it is responsible for and what it is not responsible for, and how it works, with fewer and clearer procedures. This will make it easier for citizens to see and to understand what our Union is about. We will get rid of the distinction between 'Union' and 'Community', which nobody except lawyers understands, creating a single legal entity. It makes it clear that we are not creating some huge monolithic monster – the mythology of the superstate that some people seem to fear. It is clear that we are not creating a centralised Union.
Second, it will provide for a more effective Union – a Union capable of deciding and acting with 25 Member States. It will make for more qualified majority voting and more continuity in the chairmanship of the European Council. There will be a single foreign minister to speak for the Union to the outside world, instead of the Commission speaking on some issues and the High Representative of the Council on others, which meant that third countries never knew whom they had to deal with. Those posts will be merged into a single position.
Third, and most important in my view, it will provide more democracy and accountability in the Union. Under the Constitution, all legislation will be subject first to the prior scrutiny of national parliaments, and then the double control of the Council and the European Parliament at European level, such that both have to approve virtually every item of European legislation. Frankly, this makes the European Union the most democratic international structure, or supranational structure, that exists in the world. Compare the EU to the IMF, to the World Bank, to the WTO or to any other international structure: none of them have or will have this degree of parliamentary input and of parliamentary scrutiny. We should be proud of the democracy that exists at the heart of this Union.
The Constitution will significantly reinforce that democracy by extending codecision, by giving Parliament the right to elect the President of the Commission and by improving parliamentary control over the Commission and the so-called comitology system for delegated secondary legislation.
Fourth, the Constitution introduces greater rights for citizens through the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has been incorporated into the Constitution. This, of course, applies only in the field of competence of European Union law, but that is a significant field of competence, and all European legislation henceforth will have to comply with that Charter.
All of this has led us to conclude that the Constitution is, to quote the committee's report, a 'vast improvement'. It is a vast improvement on the current Treaties and on the current constitutional order. It merits our support. These improvements are due in no small part to the input of the European Parliament into the Convention and the IGC. We can be proud of our results.
It is a compromise. It is not a Utopian treaty. All of us would have written it slightly differently had we had
to write it ourselves, but as a compromise package it is a distinct improvement. I am confident that tomorrow Parliament will endorse it by an overwhelming majority. This Parliament, elected by citizens across the whole of Europe, with parties from left to right across the political spectrum, parties in government and parties in opposition, will send a powerful signal if it endorses the Constitution tomorrow by an overwhelming majority. I am confident it will."@en1
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