Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-16-Speech-2-033"
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"en.20070116.3.2-033"2
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"Mr President, the Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty Group congratulates you, of course. It congratulates you as an individual, in the light of your courteousness and other human qualities and also in the hope of your impartial management of this Parliament that we are forming.
Admittedly, we find it rather embarrassing that your election - which, incidentally, you fully deserve, since you were previously the leader of the largest group in Parliament – has been obtained at the cost of a compromise between the two main groups which, as I had the opportunity to say yesterday, are seen as rivals by the electorate but are, rather too often for our taste, in agreement about the running of Parliament and the future of Europe.
We are relying on you to ensure that MEPs’ rights, which must be the same for everyone, are respected. The parliamentary immunity of an MEP whose freedom of expression has been compromised is no less to be protected when the MEP in question belongs to the dominant political strand as when he forms part of a minority. The Rules of Procedure must not be changed just because the provisions concerned have benefited a minority group.
I would take the liberty of recounting something that happened this morning. I heard the President of the sitting - our senior Member, Mr Berlinguer – speak and then conclude very quickly, saying that he could not make a speech as senior Member, since the Rules of Procedure prohibited him from doing so. The Rules of Procedure do indeed prohibit him from doing so following a change to the Rules that deprived the senior Member of the opportunity of speaking when he shared our sympathies. The person whose speech prompted the change was Claude Autant-Lara, France’s greatest film-maker. It was after his speech, admittedly a controversial one, that the relevant provision of the Rules was changed. It is unfortunate that this petty trick subsequently deprived us of hearing the speech that Mr von Habsburg could have made or, this morning, of the speech that the senior Member, Mr Berlinguer, could have made, even though he does not at all share my own political opinions.
Finally, we are relying on you to defend us and to champion the rights and the dignity of MEPs. Your predecessor, Mr Cox, was able to do this when Mr Schulz, for example, had been subject to attacks by the then President-in-Office of the Council. Yesterday, I heard some remarks about my group – made, for example, by the representative of the Commission, Mrs Wallström - that were totally out of place. This official should be reminded that it is Parliament that oversees the Commission, and not the other way around. All MEPs are full Members of this House. Indeed, to quarantine-off certain MEPs would amount to calling for a policy of discrimination against those who voted for them, and we are counting specifically on you to oppose a trend that would be the expression of an unfortunate drift towards totalitarianism."@en1
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