Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-011"
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"en.20050111.5.2-011"2
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".
Mr President, when at the last plenary session of the last term in office I had the honour of speaking on behalf of my group at an event held by this House in homage to Monnet, Schuman and Spinelli, I wondered what the founding fathers, the visionaries of Europe, would have thought of the point in European integration we were at and what they would have thought of the European Constitution.
Mr President, eight years ago in this very Chamber, a young Member of Parliament defended the opinion on the Treaty of Amsterdam and said that it was not perfect, as we knew, but that it was not the final destination, and cited, as I am going to do again today, a Miguel de Cervantes disenchanted with life in his final days, who said that there were occasions when we had to choose whether to be a road or an inn. That was a road, and that road has led us to where we are today and I believe that today, in this comfortable inn represented by the European Constitution, over the coming years we Europeans are going to find it to be an effective instrument to move Europe forward in peace, freedom, justice and solidarity. I would, therefore, be delighted if tomorrow this Parliament votes in favour of this document, and this is very important, since it ushers in a new era on our continent.
I believe – I said it then and I repeat it today – that they would not have believed that what was happening was real, because, leaving behind a Europe divided by fratricidal confrontations, this Constitution sanctions peace on our continent and, to use Mr Geremek’s beautiful expression, this Constitution stitches the two Europes together.
We are moving on from a Europe desolated by totalitarian regimes to a Europe – and this is sanctioned by the Constitution – based on democratic systems in which fundamental rights are respected. After a Europe of ration books, this Constitution sanctions a Europe of prosperity and material well-being. Overcoming a Europe which had disappeared from the world, this Constitution sanctions a Europe of solidarity, as demonstrated by the enormous wave of solidarity which has arisen on our continent to deal with the effects of the other terrible wave that struck Asia. This Constitution will have, and does have, instruments which will allow Europe to play a greater role in the world from now on.
I believe that the Constitution marks a point of no return and, just as, not so long ago, the Constitution of my country was the Constitution of harmony, which allowed us to move into the future, this European Constitution is going to allow all of us Europeans to move forward together within a project of common civilisation.
The value of the European Constitution is that it removes the ambiguities; it is the first document to define what the European Union is, as a Union of States and citizens, and does not weaken the Member States, far from it, because the Union’s competences are competences that come from the Member States, and it does not weaken national Constitutions, quite the contrary: it strengthens them, because the strength of the European Constitution stems from the strength of the national Constitutions.
With this Constitution, Europe is demonstrating that it is much more than a market; it is a market as well, and that is important, but it is much more: it is a project of common civilisation based on our religious, cultural and humanist heritage. This is acknowledged in the first sentence of the preamble, based on the values of freedom and human dignity, founded upon the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
It is also a Constitution that opts for a particular economic system: a capitalist system with a social dimension. If we look at the history of Europe, we see that that was not so obvious fifty years ago. Today it is.
For all of these reasons, I believe, Mr President, that many of the flags that this Parliament has unfurled over recent years are today standing as proud as those we have behind us. I joined this Parliament 13 years ago, when it was a consultative assembly; today it no longer is. I joined this Parliament when there was talk of the European Union’s democratic deficit; I believe that the European Constitution will put an end to that democratic deficit, because this Constitution introduces more democracy, more efficiency, more clarity and more transparency, as my friend, Richard Corbett, has quite rightly pointed out.
Mr President, this work has been done by many people over many years. I would like to acknowledge them today. I would like to remind you of the names of Emilio Colombo, Marcelino Oreja, Fernand Herman, Giorgio Napolitano, Olivier Duhamel, Antonio Seguro, Dimitris Tsatsos, Antoinette Spaak, and so many people who, seated here in this Parliament, have defended what today is going to become a reality. They have often been called utopians or dreamers; well, today, these dreams, these utopias, are becoming reality. We in this Parliament can feel very proud of the work we have done."@en1
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