Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20050111.5.2-015"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we have come a long way, and those of us who were Members of the previous Parliament will be able to remember how, in this Chamber, we debated the Treaty of Nice. At the time, many of us were unsatisfied with it, and we said that our stance on the Treaty of Nice would ultimately depend on what new method of reform we might have in the future and on what the efforts at reform added up to.
What this means for us is that we need a strong European Parliament, one that is a symbol of democracy, that we should act as equals in all matters affecting European legislation, that we need a strong Commission, deriving its legitimacy from its election by the European Parliament and hence also from European elections, and that we have to have a Council of Ministers whose actions are transparent.
Let me conclude by saying that much that is in the Constitution is in the nature of a programme and has yet to become reality. An example of this is Article 750, which states how we are to live as good neighbours alongside the peoples of Europe who have a European vocation – and right now it is Ukraine of which I am thinking. Another is foreign policy, an area in which we cannot, in future, allow ourselves to speak with two or three voices, but must act jointly. That is why it is not Member States of the European Union, as such, that should be seeking to join the UN Security Council, but rather the European Union as a whole, if it wants to be a global actor for human rights and democracy. It is the European Union as such that must be represented in the United Nations.
We have many tasks ahead of us. I speak for my group when I say that I hope there will be broad support for this Constitution, not only here in this House, but also in all the Member States, because this Constitution is the means whereby we will get through the twenty-first century as a Europe of freedom, democracy and peace.
The result of that is in front of us today: the Treaty on a Constitution for the European Union. Unlike in December 2000, when we discussed Nice in the absence of the Central European countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia (which is now the Czech Republic), Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia, not to mention Malta and Cyprus, none of whom had yet joined us, it is a particularly happy circumstance that today, the day when we are debating the Constitution, we have among us Members from these countries, particularly from those European countries that were once Communist. I think that is a wonderful symbol of the future we share on the continent of Europe.
I would like to extend very warm thanks to Mr Corbett and Mr Méndez de Vigo for the outstanding work they have done together with the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, and also to all those who assisted them in it. Today, I would also like to thank the Chairman of the Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, for the work he did, which was sometimes on the receiving end of criticism, but if he had not done as he did, we would probably not have this Constitution today, and so Mr Giscard d'Estaing deserves our warmest gratitude today.
We are the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) – and of the European Democrats. There are 128 MEPs in the European People’s Party, and the DE part of our group has 40 Members. Speaking for the PPE part of our group, I can assure you that we will be saying ‘yes’ to this Constitution without reservations, while the European Democrats in our group are entitled to come up with their own positions.
A constitution needs values. Almost as crucial as the procedures are the values that bind us together, for if we have no awareness of values, we have no foundation on the basis of which we can take political action. We rejoice that many of our values, which we see as Christian, have been included: human dignity, the dignity of older people, the worth of children too. I think it particularly splendid that children get a mention in the Constitution, for without children, this continent has no future, that we have described our values and banned cloning, and that reference is made to our principles – the rule of law, democracy, subsidiarity and solidarity. All these things give us cause to say ‘yes’.
Today, though, I would not wish to deny that many of us would have welcomed a reference to God in the Constitution, because it affirms that our human capacities are not infinite. We would also have been glad to see reference made to our Judaeo-Christian heritage, for, at a time when dialogue with the world’s cultures is so necessary – particularly with the Islamic world – I believe that it is important that we know where our own roots are, and that our cultural and religious development should be mentioned in the Constitution. Even though that is not in the Constitution, every Constitution is of course a compromise, and so we say ‘yes’ to this Constitution, because it reflects our values.
It is also proper that a constitution should include a description of the constitutional structure of the European Union, and I think it is particularly successful in this, talking as it does in terms of national identity. Europe is not a melting pot, nor is it meant to become a superstate; on the contrary, it is in its diversity that Europe’s wealth is to be found, beginning in our towns and communities, where people live, and in the regions. Our nation states have their own identities. We have a Constitutional Treaty which declares that it is from the nation states that the Constitution originates. It is through our own national citizenship that we are citizens of Europe, and hence freedom of organisation for local authorities is made explicit in the subsidiary structure of Europe. I think that is quite a masterstroke.
Jean Monnet, the first Honorary Citizen of Europe, once said that nothing is possible without people, and that nothing lasts without institutions, and what he said is true to this day. If we do not have values which underpin everything, and if these values are not ultimately expressed in institutions that embody them, then those values cannot be realised. That is why it is right that we should follow Jean Monnet’s directions and go down the road that leads to Europe as a community, and, my dear friends – I apologise for using an expression current in my own party, but, as we are talking about the Constitution today, we are somehow joined together as one, not that our differences should be obscured – neither now nor in the future must it be intergovernmentalism or cooperation between governments that shapes the European Union. The Europe of the future must rather be founded upon the Community method, and upon the Community action of the European institutions."@en1
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