Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-02-Speech-4-010"
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"en.20060202.3.4-010"2
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".
Your communication on the White Paper started off very well, Mrs Wallström, inasmuch as I read on the first page that communication goes hand-in-hand with its content.
I therefore expected to find a political analysis of what is causing the breakdown in relations that everyone – you, us, everybody – can see taking place between Europeans and the European institutions. In that regard, I admit to being very disappointed because the self-criticism goes no further than the sentence I just uttered. In your opinion, we just need to speak more positively about Europe and that will quite obviously restore Europeans’ erstwhile confidence in their institutions and the Community project. Can one seriously claim, however, that the liberal objectives fully embraced by Mr Barroso’s team do not have some bearing on everything that is – rightly – worrying EU citizens?
It is true that you point out certain lines to pursue in your document. It contains some attractive formulas: decentralisation, participation and culture. Over and above those terms, though, what is there of any substance in it? I get the impression that you mistake communication for dialogue. Democracy is not just about communication; above all it is about the genuine involvement of nations via their institutions. When Mr Barroso says to us at the end of summer: ‘I have got the message, I am withdrawing the texts on which there is no consensus’, and withdraws dozens of them but retains the Services Directive, I feel as though I did not campaign for the same thing as him in the referendum, and that is something I cannot countenance. For my part, I did not feel that the Directive on the Protection of Workers posed a problem, unlike the Services Directive, which poses some problems in practice. It is not enough to dress up the policies; they perhaps need changing.
I have the impression that your approach is quite technocratic and elitist. Erasmus is a fantastic programme but, as the previous speaker said, it does not have a huge bearing on the nations because we do not have the resources for it to do so. Saying that we are relying on new technologies, which are seemingly the answer to everything, is perhaps tantamount to believing that multiplying the number of websites will be sufficient to deal with the problems arising from people’s opinion of the EU - problems that we are, moreover, aware of. Do we really need to relaunch a whole series of Eurobarometer surveys to know that our citizens’ concerns are to do with relocations, social precarity, uncertainty, the health crisis and environmental upheaval? I am almost certain that Eurobarometer is going to reveal to you what I have just told you in a single sentence.
What resources are you putting in place in the face of these anxieties? When I was draftsman for the Prince Programme in the framework of the 2005 budget, I recall that the Commission had proposed splitting the funds for this programme in half, and that was after the shock of the double ‘No’ vote on the draft Constitution. It was Parliament, in this Chamber, that subsequently multiplied the funds by six.
Commissioner, your intentions are laudable but, once again, so long as you do not specify what you want to gain support for at political level, there will be no point in working on the packaging, on the little bow that you are going to wrap around it: reviewing one’s communication is a good idea, but reviewing one’s policy is a better idea."@en1
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