Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-12-Speech-2-173"
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as I have said to you on several previous occasions, following the negotiation of the accession conclusions with Bulgaria and Romania at the European Council of 16 and 17 December 2004, the Commission issued an opinion in favour of this accession on 22 February 2005. It is now Parliament’s turn to give its assent to the applications of the two countries. In this context, I think it is important – and I believe that Mr Van Orden shares this point of view – to avoid dissociating the votes on Bulgaria and Romania. We should therefore be equally welcoming in both cases, and resoundingly so.
The Committee on Foreign Affairs also voted in favour of Romania’s accession by a very substantial majority, and today I am asking you to give your assent to Romania’s accession. Why should you do so? I am doing so because I continue to champion a positive, clear and rigorous attitude. Positive because Romania’s accession is a political objective of the European Union and is what the Romanians want. Positive because a great deal of effort and a great deal of progress have been made on the road to accession, and I believe that this has acted as a catalyst on Romanian society: the previous government had started to work, the present one is continuing the job and we are on the right track.
At the same time, I suggest being clear and rigorous because, let us not deny it, problems remain, and we are familiar with them. Much remains to be done in the field of justice and home affairs, in particular in connection with the fight against corruption, organised crime, border controls, and the recognition and protection of minorities, including the Roma and the Hungarian minorities, as well as in the fields of competition and the environment. The Romanian Government must, we will continue to say, focus in particular on actually implementing administrative and judicial reform, on the fight against corruption, on the fight against social exclusion and poverty, on freedom of information, which is of course decisive for us, and on strengthening local and regional governance.
I would add finally that there are safeguards or instruments that mean that we can continue to act. I am thinking, for example, of the possible recourse to the safeguard clauses, which should not be seen as a sanction but rather as a lever for action, as a way of exerting positive pressure to ensure that matters move in the right direction, particularly in the areas that I have just mentioned.
With this in mind, the debate in the Committee on Foreign Affairs focused on an absolutely decisive point, that is the role of our Parliament. You see, one question concerns us in this assent procedure: what is going to happen once the Accession Treaty is signed, since the Council is asking the European Parliament to give its assent to an accession that will not take place for another twenty months? This procedure is actually unusual, since as a rule we give our assent further down the line. Many Members are concerned about this situation. They fear that by, as it were, signing a blank cheque, they will forgo any capacity to act in the period of time that separates us from the actual accession, and this when problems exist – and may even increase – and when there is a possibility of a safeguard clause being invoked. It is therefore important for the Commission and the Council to involve the European Parliament fully in monitoring the situation to ensure that Romania respects its commitments.
At a meeting of the committee concerned, Commissioner Rehn gave a political undertaking to involve Parliament in preparing for the accession of the two countries, and in particular to consult Parliament should the safeguard clauses be used. Several Members have worked on this issue and we have had amendments tabled on the citations and recommendations made in the reports on Bulgaria and Romania, because essentially Parliament has a role to play as a partner in these two situations.
President Borrell, who has been very active on this matter, has moreover written a letter to President Barroso on the subject, asking him to confirm the position adopted by Commissioner Rehn on 30 March, which he has done, but I imagine that he will mention this himself.
The President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker, has also had an exchange of letters on this subject with President Borrell. What can we expect today therefore, if not a confirmation of this undertaking not only from the Commission but also from the Council Presidency today or tomorrow? I hope, Commissioner and Mr President-in-Office, that you will be able to give us some reassurance on this point so that we can all vote in favour of this assent.
It will then be incumbent on the European Parliament, when the Commission publishes its next report in November, to assess whether this undertaking has been respected and to draw the necessary conclusions. In any case, what we want is for Parliament to be able to adopt this report by as large a majority as possible, for it to do so in an awareness that this marks a new phase in the enlargement of the European Union and in the completion of a joint project, but also for it do so with the feeling that I detected when I spoke to many Members, the feeling that Europe needs to be protected, that it should be possible to vote in safety and that this Parliament should also be one of the guarantors of that protection and that safety."@en1
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