Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-232"
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"en.20060118.20.3-232"2
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Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, today sees us presenting the report on the period of reflection on the European Union, from which, after many months of debate, and endorsed by the overwhelming majority on the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, emerged a road map showing a way out of the constitutional crisis. Little time now remains before Parliament takes this great step, this great decision, but if I had no more than a minute in which to speak, I would use it to thank my fellow rapporteur, Mr Duff, for the extraordinary honour and pleasure of working with him on this.
I hope that this House – if it adopts this report – will join us in appealing to all the parties, to the population at large, to the municipalities and regions, to the trade unions and to civil society, to carry on with this debate, to take up the future of this Europe of ours as a popular cause and to join with us in contending for it.
We did not envisage that this debate should be without form. We, in all the groups, agreed on six questions, covering many issues that people fight shy of talking about: the goal of European integration, the borders of Europe, the future of the economic and social model, Europe’s role in the world, the area of security, freedom and law, not to mention the social issues – and, even if the constitution does not do all the things we want it to do, which it goes without saying it will not, then I do nonetheless hope that this plan brings us a good deal closer to this objective.
Perhaps I might say one more thing about precisely where our difference with the Constitutional Affairs Committee lies. What the rapporteurs want, and what they have fought for, is another step forward rather than the continued ratification process being regarded as the end product of this debate; they want it also to be possible to improve the constitution, to retain what is at its heart and, in 2007, to revise it in a more open process and a more credible debate, with the revision to be presented to the public in a Europe-wide referendum. My hope is that, aided by the Commission’s level-headedness and this House’s courage, this further step may be taken.
From him I learned that the future – by which I mean the future we share in this Europe of ours – can be found by looking in the most diverse directions, and for that I am very grateful to him. If the combination of a Green Austrian and an English Liberal is not a handicap from the word go, then I do believe that other combinations can work just as well.
Of course, not even the harmonious notes sounded by the President of the Council’s magic flute this morning could mask the crisis that is going on in Europe, and, while he did not mention it, I would like to, and I would like to say something about what is at the heart of this crisis. At the centre of this whole, newly-ignited, dispute, the disagreements we have, and the European crisis, is a single sentence uttered by
founding father of the European Union, Jean Monnet, who said, ‘We are not uniting states; we are uniting people’. That is what today’s argument is about.
Are we to have a Europe of chancelleries, governments and elites, or the union of citizens to which this constitution has opened the door? Those who talk as if the constitution were dead are rejecting the human Europe, giving the intergovernmental Europe a shot in the arm and conjuring up the ghosts of the 19th century, those primal misfortunes from Pandora’s box: nationalism, rivalry between states, the concept of the balance of power, the striving for dominance, a fragmented Europe incapable of maintaining its own peace, let alone of becoming a power for peace. That is what this dispute is about.
Before we entered the Chamber, there were fellow Members there to welcome us dressed as ostriches. They had no need to dress up, for we knew perfectly well who they were, and we are not blind; we know that the nationalists regarded the temporary failure of the ratification process as presenting them with an historic opportunity for a nationalist renaissance. To them, by this report, and with virtual unanimity, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs delivers a resounding ‘no’.
The Constitution is not dead, for people’s need for a future in which they can live in Europe in freedom and peace at home and abroad lives on as an objective in their hearts and minds, and the Constitution is a crucial step in moving towards a social order, a political architecture, a political space, in which such a future is possible.
The crisis that the report we are presenting today attempts to resolve is a crisis of confidence, the crisis of a Union that cannot tell the difference between a union of citizens and a union of states, a Union in which people’s expectations are disappointed as a veritable matter of course. It has no answer to social issues, it suffers from a democracy deficit, fundamental rights are not secured, there is not enough transparency, and the power of governments is unbridled and subject to few controls. This constitution, though, is a step forward, and if it is beset by difficulties, then we will try to keep it on course.
What we have conceived is a European debate; I see us as bringing the process back to the people, and that adds up to nothing less than taking the elites’ project and turning it into a
a popular cause."@en1
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