Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-12-Speech-3-009"
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Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I must say, it is always a pleasure to come to Strasbourg, the very embodiment of the European city, a city that symbolises the reconciliation between France and Germany, a meeting point for so many European ambitions and an intersection of so many continental dreams.
Mr President, the European security strategy encourages us to promote peace, democracy and stability in the fight against the root causes of insecurity in the world.
It is absolutely crucial that, in a coherent and coordinated fashion, we use the entire range of EU instruments in the Western Balkans, in the Middle East, in our relations with Russia and Ukraine and in our transatlantic relations.
The future of the Balkans, a region still traumatised by its recent past, must form part of Europe’s outlook. The opening of accession negotiations with Croatia in March 2005, provided that there has been confirmation of complete cooperation with the Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, will demonstrate to all Balkan countries that their efforts towards democracy will be rewarded and might bear more fruit.
For the other countries in the region, the EU’s general action framework will continue to fall under the guidelines of the Thessaloniki Agenda, which sets out the European perspective presented to the Balkan countries. The Presidency will hold talks with Albania on a stabilisation and association agreement. A further crucial milestone in the region will be a review in mid-2005 of the implementation of the standards policy in Kosovo. We shall be paying close attention to the developing situation in Kosovo. I am of the opinion that, whatever its status, Kosovo’s future rests within the EU.
The Russian Federation is a strategic partner of the EU and remains a major factor in European security and stability. Admittedly, the state of our relations is not satisfactory at the moment. I shall do all that I can to remedy this state of affairs, whilst remaining firm on our core demands. I trust I can count on your support in this endeavour.
At the EU-Russia Summit in Moscow on 10 May, the Presidency will strive for a balanced package as regards the Four Common Spaces set out at the St Petersburg Summit, which are based on common values and shared interests.
The EU will forge close ties with the new President of Ukraine, not least in areas such as the implementation of the European Neighbourhood Policy. We have every interest in having a stable and prosperous Ukraine as a neighbour, a Ukraine that is strongly rooted in democracy, a Ukraine that is committed to the path of modernisation. The Presidency will prepare thoroughly for the summit between the EU and Ukraine that is due to take place during the United Kingdom Presidency.
I shall now turn to transatlantic relations. For the world to be a stable place, it needs a transatlantic partnership that works. At the moment, transatlantic relations are not bad, but nor are they particularly good. Leaving matters as they are, however, is not an option that will satisfy expectations on both sides of the Atlantic. Consequently, we must improve the quality of relations in the best interests of both parties. We shall do this at the two Summits with President Bush – the first in February, at the US President’s request, and the second in June. We shall not focus on the differences of opinion that some of us may have had with the United States in the recent past, but we shall try to put the emphasis on a series of practical questions to which we must give equally practical answers. Transatlantic relations would not be complete without Canada, and I am delighted that there is to be a summit with Canada during my Presidency, in which we shall be discussing matters of shared importance between friends.
The same applies, on the other side of the world, to our Japanese friends.
In addition to my pleasure at being here, I have the honour today to present to Parliament – the elected representatives of the peoples of Europe – the priorities for the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Union. The Luxembourg Presidency follows that of our Dutch friends. I must pay heartfelt tribute to their hard work, their tenacity and their undeniable successes. The EU made significant progress under the Dutch Presidency. When it comes to an end, I hope to be able to say the same of the eleventh Luxembourg Presidency, which began a few days ago.
At this point, Mr President, I should like to say a word about the Middle East. With the election of President Abbas on 9 January as head of the Palestinian Authority, and with the prospect of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a window of opportunity has opened up to relaunch the peace process and to speed up the implementation of the road map. That opportunity must now be seized. Against this backdrop, I should like to offer my support to the Middle East conference due to take place in London in March 2005. This, I am sure, will represent an essential step towards consolidating the peace process.
Under the Luxembourg Presidency, the process of EU enlargement will be guided by the decisions taken by the European Council of last December. We shall be opening accession negotiations with Turkey in March. As regards Bulgaria and Romania, I hope that Parliament will issue its assent in April on the accession of those two countries, which will enable us to sign accession Treaties, also in April.
Mr President, we cannot bring the EU closer to its citizens if we remain incapable of meeting their justifiable expectations as regards internal security. The new Constitutional Treaty paves the way towards definitively abolishing the ‘Justice and Home Affairs exception’, in other words the complete integration of this field into the European Project by means of the rigorous application of the Community method. Under our Presidency, justice and home affairs activities will be in line with this perspective, and our working basis will fall within the framework of the excellent Hague Programme, adopted by the Council in November of last year.
In order to ensure that the area of freedom, security and justice becomes a reality, we must think European before we think national. We must ensure that a European security culture is developed. This is a particularly important requirement as regards the fight against serious and organised crime. Driving forward the area of freedom, security and justice is in our view an essential, even existential, task. We must first, however, optimise operational cooperation between the Member States; for example, we must ensure that information can be exchanged quickly and smoothly between Member States’ police forces and judiciaries. This principle of availability will constitute a major step forward in cooperation between police forces and the Presidency will set about this task at the earliest opportunity. We also wish to strengthen the European judicial area, which is based on both mutual recognition and the approximation of laws. We shall ensure, in particular, that negotiations are driven forward on the European evidence warrant and on the possible establishment of a European criminal record. This will make European security stronger and will not be to the detriment of public freedoms, nor must it be, since those freedoms form part of the European way of coexistence.
The fight against terrorism must be a permanent priority. In this regard, I wish to salute the Spanish initiative to host a meeting of the Heads of State or Government in Madrid in March. The Presidency, for its part, will place particular emphasis on combating the financing of terrorism.
As far as the strand of asylum and immigration is concerned, the Presidency will focus on three elements: strengthening partnerships with countries of origin and of transit; establishing a harmonised approach with regard to the policy of return and readmission; and the European Agency for the management of operational cooperation at the external borders begins its duties on 1 May.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we often refer – and rightly so – to the Europe of the citizens. Let us not be under any illusions. If we do not succeed in making the EU an area of work and well-being for all, the citizens will become alienated from Europe, from its Union and from the political project that underpins it. In order to stave off that risk and to give Europe back its economic and social place, we launched the Lisbon Strategy almost five years ago. We wanted – and we still want – to make the EU the most competitive and most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustained economic growth, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and one that respects the environment and natural resources.
After five years of qualified success, the time has come for a mid-term review, which we shall draw up for the spring European Council. The first task will be to clarify the aim of the strategy that we are to pursue. The Lisbon Strategy – a name that, to my mind, means absolutely nothing to most people – is in fact a strategy for competitiveness, growth, social cohesion and the protection of the environment. It should be based on solid foundations of sustainable well-being for Europeans. We must act now in order, in the future, to guarantee access for all to the European social model, which must not be turned into a myth, but should remain, or rather, should return to being, a living reality for all. If we want to keep the European social model intact, it must be reformed so that it can provide a response to the growth crisis, to under-employment, to the weakening of the fabric of society, to the loss of competitiveness and productivity, to the falling birth-rate and to the ageing of our populations.
Naturally, Europeans do not like reforms; they are scared by them and do not understand the reasons behind them. We must explain to them that the reforms that we are proposing are intended to guarantee the survival and the viability of the European social model. We must convince them that putting off those reforms would prove more expensive. We must prove to them that we are right to act and would be wrong to do nothing. The bottom line is that we need to reinvigorate Europe.
The next step, when we draw up the mid-term review, is to keep together the three pillars of the Strategy – the economic, the social and the environmental. I am well aware that Europe has a competitiveness problem, which largely explains its mediocre performance in terms of growth and jobs. Of course competitiveness must be stepped up. It is not, however, an end in itself, nor some neutral, self-sufficient benefit. No, the competitiveness that we must seek should provide us with stronger and more sustainable growth and should be aimed at greater social cohesion and a more harmoniously-balanced environment.
The experience of our previous presidencies might indeed prove to be valuable, but presidencies come and go and have different characteristics. When I was President of the Council of Ministers for the first time, in 1985, there were ten Members of the European Communities; when I was President in 1991, there were 12 ministers around the table; when I took over the Presidency in 1997, there were fifteen of us, and now there are 25 Member States. In 20 years the number of Member States has more than doubled.
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Please let us not start a foolish and pointless debate over whether we should have more competitiveness and thus less social cohesion, or more social, and less environmental, cohesion. If Europe wishes to be strong, it needs three things, and those three things go together: greater competitiveness, greater social cohesion and a better-balanced natural environment.
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I say yes to competitiveness; I say no to giving up our social and ecological ambitions. I say yes, for example, to opening up service markets, but I say no to social dumping, an element that some people would like to promote.
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The bottom line, Mr President, is that we must find the right way of ensuring that the strategy is successful.
After five years of charting a rudderless course between success and failure, it is not so much a matter of knowing what we must do – because after all we do know – it is more a matter of knowing how we are to go about it. It is essential that we make the European learning area a reality, step up the research effort, improve our education systems and foster lifelong learning. This is what we must do, but how do we go about it?
We have far too many processes in Europe. We have the broad economic policy guidelines, the employment guidelines, the sustainable development strategy, the internal market strategy, the small and medium-sized business charter, the Cologne process, the Cardiff process, and many others. All too often, these processes become bogged down in bureaucratic procedures that lead nowhere. The EU is more like a research unit – a unit of unused research, at that – than a factory of ideas that are practical and are put into practice.
We must change this by streamlining our strategy. Our strategy is essentially European, but its implementation must first be national. We should like this strategy to remain essentially European. It must be subject to a broad review every two years, or preferably every three years. We cannot change strategy every six months, from Council to Council, according to the whims of the presidencies and to what is inspiring them at the time. The strategy must be there for the long haul.
The decision-making system has naturally become more complicated. What a joy and a pleasure, however, to see the countries of Eastern and Central Europe take their place in the EU, in view of the fateful decree that sought to drive a wedge between us for ever.
We should like implementation at national level to be speeded up and stepped up. We are proposing that Member States should set up action programmes at national level. These should be designed in conjunction with the social partners and must be presented to national parliaments, which, along with the Community bodies, would monitor their implementation. These national programmes would take account of the particular national and regional characteristics and should provide the possibility for assessing the pace and intensity of the respective national reforms separately and should make it easier to gauge the level of performance achieved up to a given point.
So much for the strategy and the way in which it is to be implemented. We shall discuss this matter again together, Parliament, the Council and both of us with the Commission, which will soon present its summary report to us.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the partial reorientation of the Lisbon Strategy also invites us to reflect on the Growth and Stability Pact. I beg your pardon, the Stability and Growth Pact!
Actually, I would have preferred it the other way round.
Yet as Europe was governed in 1996 by our old friends – and not the ones you would think! – the second order was the one that was kept.
We began a review of the Pact under the Dutch Presidency and we should like to conclude it under the Luxembourg Presidency. We are going to reform the Pact, or rather, to adjust its implementing measures. Let me explain this by first detailing what we are not going to do.
Economic and Monetary Union needs stability. We therefore have no intention of driving stability away, neither in what we say nor in what we do. Stability is a founding element of the pact that forms the basis of the euro. We promised a stable currency. It will remain stable and it will remain strong. It follows – let me say right away – that the Presidency will not propose to neutralise or immunise certain categories of budgetary spending applicable under the Pact. It follows that the basic criteria – 3% for the deficit, 60% for the debt – will remain applicable.
The experience of our various presidencies and of observing the successive presidencies of other countries has taught me two things. Firstly, the EU will not genuinely move forward if those holding the Presidency place their own national interests at the heart of their concerns rather than replacing them with the common interest, the best definition of the interests of everyone. It follows that the EU will not find genuine coherence, let alone harmony, unless we all respect the spirit and the letter of the Community method and the balance between the three institutions.
It is clear to me, however, that changes must be made, not least in order that the Pact can take better account of the economic cycle. During times of strong economic growth, Member States in the euro zone must, as a matter of priority, be required to allocate budget surpluses to reducing the debt and the deficit. We shall enrich the preventative element of the Pact by means of a strong dose of extra stability.
During times of weak growth, on the other hand, Member States in the euro zone should be given more reactive room for manoeuvre as regards the budget. The greater the efforts to reduce the deficit and the debt during periods of economic expansion, the wider that room for manoeuvre. If, during periods of weak growth, a Member State incurs an excessive deficit, this situation and the consequences arising from it, not least in terms of the timing of correction, will be judged by means of objective measures of assessment.
We must avoid at all costs arbitrary political judgments that might lead to differing assessments based on the size of the country. From this perspective, Luxembourg is always the loser.
Mr Cohn-Bendit, we shall have a proper debate when the time comes, in committee, without too many witnesses, on the comparison that could be made between France, Germany and Luxembourg as regards taxation. It is a debate that will be interesting and informative for those who, I must say, view Luxembourg in a somewhat superficial manner.
Let me invite you to a calm debate about the Pact. I am wary of extreme solutions. I say no to those who seek to replace stability with brazen, unbridled flexibility, as well as to those who seek to set the Pact, as it is now, in the cement of dogma. We need greater stability and greater flexibility to take account of the economic cycle.
Mr President, you would no doubt be surprised if I failed to mention the debate that we are to hold on the financial perspectives. In front of you, I would not wish to detail the component parts of this – it must be said – difficult dossier, because your grasp of them is better than mine. I shall simply say that the Luxembourg Presidency will do all that it can to reach an agreement on the financial perspectives before the end of June.
I am not under any illusions, however. The Member States are currently entrenched in their positions and it will be difficult to move them from those positions in time, by which I mean now! If we do not reach an agreement on a common position under the Luxembourg Presidency, by 1 January 2007, it will be politically, legislatively and technically impossible to meet the challenge of the enlarged EU.
Consequently, no institution or Member State will have any interest in playing extra time. The absence of an agreement in June will not be the Presidency’s failure, which is only of very minor interest to me, but Europe’s failure. Let us decide. Let us decide quickly. Let us decide now.
The Commission is not a touch judge solely in charge of monitoring compliance with the rules of the internal market. It should be the playmaker, the inspiration and the driving force of the team. The Council, for its part, is not the field of play of exclusively national interests, however justified those may be, but rather a workshop of understanding. The place of Parliament, for its part, is not that of a spectator watching from the stands. It is an actor with privileged status because it is legitimised by universal suffrage.
We must spare Europe a long, drawn-out debate lasting 18 months or even more. That would cause even more disputes and exacerbate the conflicts between the Member States and the institutions. Mr President, I am relying on Parliament to drive forward the decision-making process on the financial perspectives. We shall work with you, because your agreement is necessary. You will not be handed a
I guarantee you that.
That, Mr President, is the thrust of our programme. Presidencies come and go, but fortunately Europe remains. We want to serve Europe with determination and passion, with the determination and the passion that long distances and grand ambitions require.
You will, therefore, see me regularly in your offices, in your meetings and in your corridors in Brussels and Strasbourg. I say this for myself, for my ministers and for all those who work in the service of Parliament, and thus in your service. Together we must oversee the ratification of the new Constitutional Treaty in the right conditions. It is true that the draft Constitution is not perfect, but we must not benchmark it against perfection; we must benchmark it against what Europe will need in order to remain an example to the world in the future. Let us do now what must be done in order for this to be the case in the future and let us ratify the Treaty. Let us not forget that the Treaty is a text that is of neither the left nor the right. Its content will be the fruit of our convictions, of our will and of our ambition. If our will and our ambition are perfect, the implementation of the new Treaty, which may be imperfect in theory, will probably be perfectly successful in practice.
The ratification of the Treaty will not be an easy task everywhere, and I have one major concern in this regard: let us not use the potential difficulties of the parliamentary ratifications and referendums as an excuse to slacken the pace of action or to avoid making decisions. Let us not put off the most difficult decisions until the day after the first referendum, then until the day after the second referendum, then until the day after the third referendum, and so on. When we ask for the approval of the peoples and the parliaments of Europe, let us show them that Europe works, that Europe is on the move, that Europe is decisive and that Europe is capable of fulfilling its responsibilities. If the EU takes decisive action it can win over the doubters; if it is inactive it can put doubts in the minds of those previously convinced.
Mr President, when the new Presidency takes up its duties there is usually a solemn atmosphere, but that has been overshadowed this year by the terrible tragedy of the seaquake in South-east Asia. The deeply distressing pictures of the dead, the injured and the devastation cast a giant shadow over the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005. This tragedy will linger long in the memory and I hope that, in addition to the immediate emergency aid, we shall show lasting solidarity with the devastated peoples and regions of Asia. I should also like us to ensure that the misery that we are seeing in Asia today does not make us turn our backs on the poverty, the underdevelopment, the hunger and the death of innocent people elsewhere. Our hearts should be in places where the television cameras are no longer or have never been."@en1
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