Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-054"
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"en.20070117.3.3-054"2
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"Mr President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, a great deal of detail has already been gone into in the course of the debate on how the constitutional treaty is to be resuscitated, which occasioned some comments at the weekend from Roman Herzog, the former Federal President of Germany, and also a former president of that country’s constitutional court. I would like to make it perfectly plain that what we jointly drafted in the Convention was the right response to Roman Herzog’s analysis of the need for the national parliaments to be involved at an early stage.
I would also, however, appeal to our counterparts in the national parliaments to do their duty. When I consider just how much of what has been accused of ultimately tending to centralise Europe is attributable to the initiatives of Councils of Ministers, then I have to be frank in saying that these things were concocted, not, Mr President of the Commission, by the Commission in Brussels, and not by the European Parliament meeting in this place, but, in the main, by the Ministers with their several responsibilities meeting in Councils of Ministers.
I therefore find it very regrettable that our friend Mr Cohn-Bendit is no longer present, for he came up with a very pertinent analysis of the way intergovernmental cooperation functions, citing as an example the Treaty of Nice, which goes back to the year 2000, and having something to say about the work of the Intergovernmental Conference that followed the Convention. In response to all that, though, I would point out that, at that time, it was his old friend and fellow commune-resident from his Frankfurt days, his fellow-Green, Joschka Fischer, who, as foreign minister, bore some responsibility for this, so, instead of boring this House with it, these things ought better to be discussed in his commune.
I have one final comment to make on this: we are talking about the social Europe, something that we all want, but the question arises of what this Europe of ours can afford if it is to be social. What do the Member States have to do to give people a social home? I do not believe that we can solve problems by handing more and more over to Brussels, but rather by delegating downwards where matters such as responsibility and social security are concerned; that is the only way in which we will get anywhere. We wish you much success in your Presidency, and will support you to the best of our abilities."@en1
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