Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20060531.9.3-045"2
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"Mr President, Mr Verhofstadt, it is indeed commendable that, with your latest paper and your speech in this House today, you have helped to bring this fatal period for reflection to an end, because – as many of my fellow MEPs have said, and rightly so – it is high time that there was at last further discussion of how Europe is to proceed.
I personally share your vision of a federal United States of Europe. As a member of the Convention to draft the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and also of the Constitutional Convention, the extent to which this idea is really so much pie in the sky became clear to me, however, in the corresponding debates. Ideas about how far European integration should now be taken are extremely different, not only between the Member States but also between political forces, indeed even within the political groups, including my own.
In view of all this, I had never expected, when the Constitutional Convention began, what great strides it would be possible to make in deepening integration and how much more it would be possible to achieve in terms of democracy, citizens’ rights and the strengthening of a polity based on social welfare. The Constitution constitutes huge progress for Europe and, at the same time, reflects the political consensus that has been achieved. A member of my own party very recently spoke of it contemptuously as old, unpalatable rubbish, but it really is nothing of the kind. Neither the progress made nor the consensus achieved should be put at risk.
That, Mr Verhofstadt, is precisely why I do not share your concept of the eurozone states, nor Mr Sarkozy’s alternative concept of what he calls the pioneer group. In my view, both models are already unrealistic because, in the course of last year, two founder states quite obviously lost the title, ‘pioneer of Europe’. The fact that Commission President Barroso has still not understood the signs of the times is shown by his agenda, which is purportedly citizen-friendly but which, in my opinion, amounts to nothing other than a return to Nice.
I am convinced that it is only as a social Europe that our continent will be equipped to face the future, and on this matter I share Mr Juncker’s opinion. In receiving the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen, an award on which I should like to congratulate him, Dr Juncker rightly pointed out that Europe would founder if, in the next few years, it did not succeed in becoming a social Europe, for example through having a basic minimum of employees’ rights, valid throughout Europe. It is a pity that you have said so little about this."@en1
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