Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-231"
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"en.20060517.20.3-231"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, once again I am very pleased at the change to the legal basis of the stability instrument, and am grateful to the Commission and the Council for having accepted this change. I am also pleased that the negotiations with the Council made it possible to restrict the scope of the stability instrument by limiting cooperation in the fields of peacekeeping and anti-terrorist activities. Nevertheless, the Commission's proposal aiming to establish a non-compulsory call-back mechanism does not make up for the deficiencies in Parliament's power of codecision on the political content.
With regard to the Mitchell report, I am delighted that Parliament has not yielded to the Commission or the Council. Tomorrow, we are going to vote on a text that maintains Parliament's powers and allows it to retain its role as colegislator regarding the political direction to be taken by the new cooperation and development instrument. There is no reason to yield because this power is an established right. Indeed, the political guidelines on which we want to secure codecision will replace 16 regulations that underwent the codecision procedure. Now that the initial battle has been fought, we expect the Commission to propose a policy soon so that we can complete the second reading before the end of this year.
Nevertheless, I am concerned about the neighbourhood instrument. It raises the same problems as the development instrument, but the response provided is considerably different. As in the case of the Development Cooperation and Economic Cooperation instrument (DCECI), this instrument is subject to the codecision procedure but has no political content. As in the case of the DCECI, the political content to be defined will, for 15 of the 17 countries covered by the neighbourhood instrument, replace around a dozen subject-related regulations subject to the codecision procedure.
In an effort to retain its competences, Parliament itself proposed the call-back mechanism to express its opinion on the political content of the neighbourhood instrument within the framework of the codecision procedure in the case of differences with the Commission. We are an elected assembly and our work is, by definition, political. We have chosen, though, to legislate on the most technical aspect of the partnership – the procedural framework – but to keep our peace on the political strategy. Today, we are prepared to give up the call-back mechanism and to yield to the Commission and the Council in order to adopt this text at first reading.
Why should we go back on an established right? Why should our legislative power be curtailed at a time when Parliament is achieving significant legislative victories in other areas, such as port services, the Services Directive and, tomorrow, the DCECI? I understand that we need to reach a speedy compromise on this instrument with the Council and the Commission, but how can any elected representative vote to lose his prerogatives?"@en1
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