Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-08-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20050608.3.3-022"2
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"Mr President, a former Labour prime minister said that a week is a long time in politics. I suspect that, whatever one’s views on the outcome of the French and Dutch referenda, few would disagree with that observation.
I do not want to go back over the issue of the Constitution and the referendum results, but I believe that it is now very difficult for the Constitution to be taken forward in its present form. We can dwell on that forever. What we should be doing this morning is looking at the positive sides of what is going on in Europe and what we can achieve outside of that situation. There must be an proper ongoing debate on the kind of Europe we want to build. The people have given a clear message and part of that message is that they feel alienated by the processes and by the institutions. That cannot be good for democracy and it undermines the trust we need from the people to carry out our responsibilities.
However, we should now proceed with our programme and not be distracted too much. It is very important at the moment that there should be no delay in driving forward the Lisbon Agenda, the current liberalisation policies or the sustainable development arguments. As the President has said, we have to meet the challenges from China, India and other parts of the world with fast-growing economies. It would be quite wrong, therefore, to deny our people the chance of greater prosperity, because we are diverted and distracted, possibly for a long period of time, by a structural issue which seems to be going nowhere at present.
So there is an urgent need for us to seize our opportunity for renewal. We have to grasp the scale of what has happened this week, but we must move on and forward in a way that meets with the approval of the European people as a whole. The Union has been offered this chance to rethink its future and face up to the profound questions concerning its future direction. But we must not allow ourselves to be diverted away from the policies that are already being developed and pursued vigorously and necessarily to benefit all of us."@en1
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