Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-11-Speech-2-041"
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"en.20050111.5.2-041"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the destiny of Europe is at stake. I believe that I know what that means; my father survived the battle of Stalingrad; my mother emerged from the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. Are we not all, on this continent, the products of an endless succession of perpetrators and victims of ceaseless violence?
That is why I insist that Europe is a promise – a promise made 60 years ago on the brink of the abyss that was Auschwitz, and in the ruins of Europe. The promise was that nationalism would be overcome, that democracy and the rights to freedom would be unrestricted and that Europe would be united politically. Our actions must be measured against that.
This Constitution, which the vast majority of Greens will be endorsing, is a great step toward this promise being kept. It is not the end; the tasks have not been completed. It is for that reason that we will be voting in favour of it, and of the report as well. This Constitution lays the foundations of a European democracy. It establishes the Union as a community of fundamental rights. Its policies are underpinned by a common code of all-embracing values and objectives; for the first time, it declares social rights to be human rights as traditionally understood. It simplifies the Treaties, makes external actions subject to international law, makes the EU more effective and transparent, more democratically legitimate, and creates the possibility of its citizens sharing in its decision-making. Indeed, it does create something that is a Europe of citizens rather than the Europe of state chanceries that once existed.
That is why we will be voting in favour of it, and that is why I am glad to see Mr Wurtz here to hear me say that I find his criticisms incomprehensible. His amendment makes no reference to democracy, even though this Constitution is indispensable if Europe is to be democratic. Why does he not mention that? He claims that social progress is absent, yet this Constitution, for the first time in the 200 years’ history of human rights, acknowledges and enshrines social rights as human rights in the traditional sense of the word!
Despite certain contradictions, we have, for the first time, incorporated full employment and the social market economy in the list of this Constitution’s objectives and values. It is not true to say that we have agreed to make Europe a military power. The whole process is highly questionable. The issue of our relationship with NATO is as yet unresolved, and, although none can surely say in what way Europe will emancipate itself, we have made our actions subject to international law and to the UN Charter, while also, and for the first time, making civil conflict prevention a task imposed by the Constitution. You cannot make things so easy for yourself.
I am worried about the ratification process, but that is not what we have to get through. When the president of the Lithuanian parliament was here, when our Hungarian colleagues spoke, these ratifications took place without any information campaign on the part of the governments and without any public debate. Is that how we want to win the Constitution? We will not do it that way! We have at least nine referendums ahead of us, and please can the rapporteurs, whom I want to congratulate and thank, allow us to say that this report is completely uncritical. That puts a question mark against the credibility of this House.
We are not the Intergovernmental Conference’s court poets. We are not here to sing the praises of a Constitution that is not without its defects. We have not created a European social order. European democracy is incomplete. The shaping of a European peace framework still calls for great deeds to be done, and so I would have liked to see us not only vote by a large majority to adopt this Constitution, but also open up prospects for the continuation of the constitution-making process. We in the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance will make our contribution by setting in motion the first citizens’ initiative, which will demand a first amendment to the Constitution, completing democracy, peace and the social order in Europe."@en1
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