Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-22-Speech-3-032"
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"en.20050622.13.3-032"2
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"I have often praised the Luxembourg Presidency. You always do things well at a technical level, but today I must criticise you, Mr Juncker, for the summit’s decision to continue the ratification process with a document rejected by the French in a binding referendum. What an insult to your French neighbours and Dutch friends from the Benelux countries! What contempt for the law! The Treaty of Nice is unambiguously clear: it may only be altered by a unanimous vote, and there is no such unanimity now that the Netherlands has said that it will not ratify the Constitution. What a retreat from reality, too! All reflective people know that that document would never survive a referendum in, for example, Great Britain. The Constitution is dead. One should bury the dead, and doing so cannot be deferred or postponed. With all respect, even you cannot breathe life into a corpse by threatening to withdraw as Prime Minister if the Luxembourgers also politely reject a Constitution that, on the basis of population figures and with no proper exercise of democracy, would shift power from the electorate to officials.
You are wasting time. Let us, rather, start afresh. Let us bring the same number of proponents and opponents of the Constitution together and prepare a joint consultation document for new ground rules. We shall be able to discuss this and elect a new Convention able to represent the electorate’s attitude to Europe’s future. We shall then be able to obtain a practical, brief and easily understandable cooperation agreement able to be adopted in referenda on the same two days in all the EU countries. If we devise an agreement that is better than the Treaty of Nice, most Europeans will naturally vote in favour of it. If the watchwords are transparency, democracy and proximity to the people, we shall also be happy to do so. A new opinion poll shows that 80% of Danes support the proposal to reverse the burden of proof in matters of transparency and that 79% want each country to be able to elect its own Commissioner. There are only, respectively, 11% and 12% of Danes who are opposed to these proposals. That is the type of support we should be seeking by means of a new treaty. We should not be seeking a Constitution to take precedence over Luxembourg’s and other countries’ constitutions."@en1
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