Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20050111.5.2-023"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what we have been given here is a Constitutional Treaty founded on the work of a Convention composed largely of parliamentarians, and, as it was they who made this breakthrough possible, the development of Europe is no longer in the hands of diplomats. Ninety per cent of the draft produced by the Convention then went through the Intergovernmental Conference, and I believe that it was this method, involving the peoples of Europe through their elected representatives, that was crucial in terms of the progress made.
The fact is that sovereignty continues to be vested in the Member States, and every competence not expressly defined as being European remains with them. In this respect, this Constitution surpasses anything else we have had; as the opponents of a superstate argue that Nice is worse, it is they who must surely be in favour of the Constitution. That is the truth of the matter, and so I would ask Mr Allister and Mr de Villiers to take an open-minded look at the way things are and not tell their voters and the public things that are not true.
This Europe seeks to pool sovereignty where we as individual states are too weak to go it alone. What this means is that we do not want to take sovereignty away; on the contrary, we want to reclaim it for our citizens where we cannot act otherwise.
Now that the tsunami has struck, we can see that the nation-states can no longer help on their own, because it is beyond us, and that is why our peoples need to be given additional strength through our standing together in order to have a chance of survival in this globalised world order. That, after all, is the whole point of this European enterprise, whose traditional objective has been to make war in Europe impossible – an objective of which we must not lose sight. At the same time, the citizens, states and peoples must retain their own identities. In the future, too, I would like, as a German, to be able to get angry when we lose at football to the Dutch. We want to retain our identity. It is in diversity that our wealth is to be found. That cannot mean, though, that we do not take joint action in situations in which our strength depends on our standing together.
We should see to it that the Constitution is successfully ratified. Domestic, day-to-day policy must not be allowed to decide how the Member States and their parties handle the ratification process; what is, instead, decisive is the historic moment, in which it will become apparent where the statesmen are in the Member States, moving the process of ratification forward.
Not everything in this constitution is perfect, but I think the decisive thing is that it is better than what we have at present. This Constitutional Treaty reinforces the citizens in their rights; the Charter of Fundamental Rights will give them entitlements and safeguards. It strengthens citizens’ rights because, in future, the election of the President of the Commission will be directly dependent on the votes of the European Parliament. The public’s hand is strengthened both by the referendum and by extending the rights of the European Parliament. This Constitution has become more transparent, because it makes the allocation of powers and responsibilities clearer, thereby making procedures more readily comprehensible, and because the Council is, at least when taking decisions on lawmaking, required to meet in public.
The extension of majority decision-making may well not be sufficient, but it is considerable, and it does make the European Union more efficient, something that is apparent in other areas, for example, in the removal of the pillars structure and the introduction of a single legal personality, and, in particular, in the substantial improvements made in the fields of foreign, security and defence policies.
Our Europe is founded upon values. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which I regard as drawing to a high degree on the Christian conception of what humanity is, is – or so I believe – one of its wonders. Having been drafted by a previous Convention, the marvellous thing about it now is that so many peoples can take such a common basis of values as their guide and that those who make our laws in future must look to see that these values are adhered to – and this is legally binding rather than a matter of policy.
We want this Europe of ours to be a community, and that is what the Convention wanted. Now, as we move to make the Constitution work, we have to attach high priority to what the Convention wanted being retained, without it being altered by a technocratic approach to its implementation.
Even now, we have a Foreign Service on which to practise, and we are constantly hearing of attempts already being made in the corridors of countries’ foreign ministries to contest the Commission’s powers – and hence also those of the European Community and its Parliament – as a means towards establishing a new intergovernmental authority.
In the way it is represented abroad, too, the European Union is a Community, and we see this in its foreign relations, in development and in many other areas of activity, and this must not be changed by the technocratic way these are shared out in a foreign service. Here we have fought to secure substantial rights for the Commission, without whose consent nothing happens, and I would point out to it and to the Council that we will keep a very close eye on this.
The way in which Europe’s powers and responsibilities are ordered makes clear that those powers and responsibilities are conferred by the Member States, and it is for this reason that all this talk of a superstate is complete nonsense."@en1
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