Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-15-Speech-1-084"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is in the same constructive spirit in which the rapporteur has just spoken that I would like to reply on behalf of the Commission and say that the most important thing about this project is indeed that the institutions should cooperate closely with one another.
I am most obliged to Mrs Kaufmann for having said that, considered from the political point of view, this project enjoys your House’s wholehearted support; although the debate we have just had has made that clear to me, it was important that it should be confirmed. I will also readily concede that there was room for improvement in the test run that we are discussing today, and I am quite sure that the Commission will accept many of the suggestions you have made in your report. I do not think that we will, in future, have any more grounds for complaint about cooperation in this matter.
I would, though, very much like to set out once more what we have actually achieved. Current legislative procedures have been reviewed in the light of the new considerations and priorities that have recently emerged. What happened before they did so? This Commission is concentrating its efforts on a strategy for growth and employment, and what we wanted to know was whether the proposals that were already on the table were congruent with this strategy’s objectives and priorities. Mrs Kaufmann will be aware that the problem with many of these proposals was that no assessment whatever of their eventual impact had been carried out, even though it was to be expected that some of them would have a massive effect on the economy. That is the second argument, for the Commission had in fact, in the previous year, already decided that no more proposals would be put forward without a broad-based and methodologically sound means of assessing their impact, and it was with this, too, in mind that the proposals were reviewed to determine whether they would be equal to the demands for quality lawmaking that we had newly devised.
Lastly, too, there was also the question of whether specific proposals still stood a chance of being adopted, and that brings me to the point that you so rightly addressed. There were a number of proposals in respect of which your House did not share the Commission’s view, for example where the legal status of association and companies on a mutual basis is concerned, proposals in respect of which have been lying around in the Council for twelve years without the least thing being done with them. There is not the remotest indication of the Council actually wanting to do anything with these proposals, and one cannot but wonder whether they are perhaps unlikely to survive the political process, and whether one perhaps ought to think again and come up with something better.
It is in precisely those cases in which your House has expressed misgivings that the Commission has announced the forthcoming close re-examination of the underlying issues – the social significance of which I acknowledge – and the possibility of our producing new proposals that would actually stand a chance of being considered within an appropriate period of time.
Where justification is concerned, I am of one mind with you; I do not believe that to be a problem in either political or legal terms. When the Commission took its decision, it had in its possession individual justifications for every single proposal. I am myself unable to explain to you why these individual justifications were not put before your House, for I had no objection whatever to that being done, and, moreover, had personally handed over the individual justifications to the groups’ rapporteurs, so I am sure that we will be able to take these proposals into consideration.
I would like to make it quite clear how important it is to me that the rapporteur has not lost sight of the point that the withdrawal of proposals forms part of the exercise of the right of initiative. The Commission is also, in principle, open to your suggestion that the annual legislative and working programme should, in future, indicate which, if any, proposals the Commission intends to withdraw, so that Parliament may express its point of view in good time. I regard that as a very sensible proposal.
I hope that it will be clear to you from my response that I do not believe that we should get into an argument about the principles of this. I am quite happy to acknowledge that things could have been done better in one or other respect, but what matters to me is that we should, together, make a success of the political project, and where that is concerned I can do no other than agree with your rapporteur that that is precisely what Europe’s citizens expect of us. What they expect is not deregulation, not the erosion of rights and certainties, but rather that European legislation should be clear, simple, comprehensible and usable, so let us work together to that end."@en1
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