Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-15-Speech-1-022"
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"en.20070115.9.1-022"2
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".
Mr President, I have to be honest: you were not my group’s candidate in 2004. We had proposed Bronisław Geremek, one of the fathers and architects of today’s Europe of 27 Member States and a symbol of Europe’s reunification. But you have been fair and gentlemanly in your chairmanship of this House: you have treated its Members with courtesy and its business with patience and serenity. As a newcomer to this Parliament, it is not easy to be asked to lead it, and you rose to the challenge. Given the words of Mr Schulz, I wonder whether he fears for his own position should you return to his benches!
Mr President, particularly I appreciate your commitment to engaging with our citizens. You have invited many of us to join you in your work as an active European in your home country. You have also shown commendable commitment and almost endless energy in promoting the European Union across the continent, and your mission in particular to Europe’s young people has marked your work.
However, it has not been limited to the European Union: you have been an active President of this House beyond our shores in your promotion of the Euromed Parliamentary Assembly, in your facilitation of the establishment of a Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly and beyond. Nonetheless, I suspect that your greatest success during your presidency has been overseeing the successful integration of Bulgarian and Romanian Observers into this House.
The presence today of new Members signals the completion of the fifth enlargement of our Union. The sight here today of two new Commissioners, Leonard Orban and Meglena Kuneva – at work since 1 January – warms our hearts, and the presence in the Council of Ministers of two new countries strengthens our Union as it prepares for an important birthday.
Mr President, your predecessor, Pat Cox, put much effort into modernising our House. While recognising the reforms you have promoted, my group would have liked to have seen more reforms in the working of this House. We know that you tried, only to find yourself bound, like Gulliver, at every turn by the bureaucracies of two political groups. Their presence – the stubborn presence of the centuries – hangs heavy on our work. Why should the European Parliament not meet formally every week to receive a report from the Commission? Why should every Member not have a screen on their desks to bring us into the 21st century? Why should our democracy be governed by rules laid down by a 19th century Belgian mathematician called D’Hondt? These rules produce a result that is worked out on a calculator rather than a ballot paper, influenced more by the size and influence of nations than the European commitment and competence of the candidates. It is something we must review if we are to reassert our democratic credibility in this, the 50th year since the signing of the Treaty of Rome, for if we fail to keep up with the times, public disillusion will grow. The appeal of the abhorrent forces of knee-jerk nationalism on the far right may widen.
Therefore, I trust, Mr President, that your successors will engage with all Members of this House in a debate about the organisation of Parliament’s affairs in order to preserve and develop the values which you have upheld so courageously in your term as President.
In closing, let me congratulate Mr Daul on his maiden speech as leader of his group. We will no doubt hear far more from him in the years to come."@en1
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