Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-068"
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"en.20070117.3.3-068"2
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".
Mr President, I am most grateful for this wide-ranging debate, and would just like to give particular attention to a few points.
This is precisely the point we are reaching with Croatia, which will perhaps be the next candidate for accession, but it has to do with the whole of the Western Balkans too. As I said, we have thousands of soldiers stationed there. What do we have to look forward to? Disputes about whether we are going to move forward, and, if so, how?
Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether a meeting now would be well-advised as the way to proceed, we will, in the course of our presidency, take care that members are not divided into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, but that we achieve a result together. It has to be said, though, that those eighteen Member States that have already ratified, have done so in the full conviction that this was the right thing to do. Germany is one of them. These eighteen are certainly not going to say, ‘OK, let us do something about enlargement and let everything else go hang’. Europe will certainly not work like that. That is why we have to take on board the fact that the draft constitutional treaty has already been ratified by 18 Member States.
That, for today, is all I have to say about the constitutional treaty. We will of course keep you informed about it. We will be meeting in Berlin with that purpose in mind and will then have another meeting in June. I hope that your House will be supportive, and ask those who have sounded a sceptical note today to have a rethink about it all.
What we do agree on is that climate change and energy are crucial issues, and it is for that reason that the Commission has come up with a number of proposals, many of which I think are absolutely spot-on, and the President has already had something to say about them. A number of them will have to be discussed at Council level. I shall do everything possible to ensure that the Council on 8/9 March produces as specific a response as possible to the Commission’s big package, and that will not be easy.
Anyone who has ever looked into the subject of energy will know that the cooperative line currently taken by the Council is, in essence, in advance of the Constitution, for, where powers are concerned, it is in the Constitution that that issue of energy is mentioned for the first time, in a modern response to the challenges we face.
The work of European integration began with coal and steel. In our modern society, energy efficiency, security of energy supply, solidarity between the Member States and foreign policy in relation to energy assume the same importance that coal and steel did then.
If we can find no answer to these problems, then we really are in trouble. Climate change is of course one of them, and another, self-evidently, is the need to promote renewable energies, to improve energy efficiency and promote the admixture of biofuels.
What I have to say to Mr Cohn-Bendit is that nuclear power will, of course, continue to be a bone of contention. Speaking personally, and as one who is all in favour of it, let me say that I believe that we must nevertheless apply some vigour to saving energy and finding renewable varieties of it. I believe that these must not be seen as mutually contradictory but should instead be seen as belonging together.
Firstly, there are those to do with the constitutional treaty. With all due respect to Mr Cohn-Bendit, I must of course object to his comparison of the Council with a darkroom. I do not think that characterising the Council as a darkened room into which the light of transparency – in the shape of your House – shines, is an accurate description of the relationship between the two.
I would also like to say something about the social state model, and it is that Europe is unthinkable without it. It is because globalisation has put this social state model under pressure that we must consider how we can continue to guarantee people’s standard of living; it will not be easy. In 1900, Europeans made up 26% of the world’s population; we now make up something between 12% and 14%, and, by the beginning of the twenty-second century, that figure will have dropped to 4% or 5%. We must see to it that we hang on to what we have worked so hard for.
I have looked into this. The Council has already decided that impact assessments are needed in social security matters too, and it will be again asking the Commission to make more use of them, to the point where it becomes normal practice.
I have to say, though, that Germany’s experience of the social market economy has been that it makes it possible for capital and labour to be reconciled, and so I ask you not to make us play the one off against the other. There are those who want less bureaucracy, and there are others who want to defend social provision. The two are not contradictory; on the contrary, in the European social state model, they belong together. That is why, of course, freedom without the necessary social conditions is no more than highly deficient or not even viable at all. It is only through freedom, competition and confidence in people that individuals can be enabled once more to achieve something that makes for prosperity for every citizen. That ‘social’ always means compensating those who are weaker is not a matter of doubt; without that, the social market economy and the European social state model are not even conceivable.
I have two final comments to make, the first of which has to do with internal and justice policy. This week, in Dresden, an excellent informal council meeting was held. Yes, we are committed to the Prüm Convention! I believe that the common area of justice and security is something people want at a very fundamental level. Yes, of course, the balance between protection of data and the exchange of information is a recurrent topic of serious debate, and my less than total enthusiasm for the line taken by the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe has something to do with the fact that I would not be one of their members if I were a Member of your House, but this is a debate we will have to keep coming back to.
My last word has to be about the trimming of bureaucracy. The nation states know what they have to do. Although the constant mutual recriminations get us nowhere, the simple fact is that the much-lauded
has, over the years, grown rather than diminishing in size.
As I discovered from my own experience, one of the blessings of German reunification was that the German legal system became effective as a whole and at a stroke. If I may now make so bold as to speak for the new Member States that have been fortunate enough to be presented with the whole
so to speak, all on one plate, there are certain questions I would just like to raise. There is in fact nothing anti-European about wanting to review whether all our legislation is still relevant to present circumstances, about considering whether it has piled up to such a degree over time that some of it could be summarised, about looking to see if there are modern methods that make ten-page application forms redundant.
I will never forget seeing what the fishermen on Rügen in my electoral district did with the first applications for fisheries subsidies; they simply threw the forms in the waste-paper basket, because they could not imagine how they could ever complete them all.
This really is not about making things less certain; it is about making Europe – despite people’s experience of red tape – an attractive place in which it is possible to live, so, with that in mind, let us address that issue as well.
The Treaties of Rome were the Council’s handiwork, and Parliament can be said to have emerged from them. We want Parliament to be of major importance as a venue for wide-ranging debate, for we must not forget that it is you, its Members, who bring Europe to the people, you who are a vitally important link alongside all the other opinion-formers, but I would also ask you to bear in mind that the representatives of the governments – which are themselves, of course, democratically elected too – are doing their work to the best of their knowledge and ability, and that the only way we will be truly effective is for the Commission, the Council and your House to work together.
If I may turn to the subject of a referendum, to which reference has been made, I will be frank and say that I have no time for the idea of a referendum on the same day throughout Europe, or in the countries where one can be held, and not only because Germany would not be able to take part in it, but also because we need to make clear what is stated in the constitutional treaty, namely that it is the Member States that have the final word where the Treaties are concerned – that is the fact of the matter, and that is why it is the Member States that must decide for themselves whence the legitimacy of this treaty is to be derived, and what shape it should take, in order then to transfer powers to Europe. I would also say, however, that I favour a democratic Europe in which the Commission and Parliament work very closely together.
How, then, are we now to proceed? The situation is, of course, a complex one; we all know that. We have to take the existing Treaty as our starting point. I am highly sceptical about the idea that another Convention will be of any use to us now. We have to endeavour to move forward those things that the Convention got right, some of which the Council then altered, and there is scope for a long debate about those.
There is something I would like to say to our friends from the United Kingdom. What makes your attitude almost antagonistic is that this constitutional treaty is one that gives the national parliaments more of a say, setting boundaries more clearly and achieving clarity, and the opposition to this constitutional treaty on the part of those who want greater clarity, more of a say, and more subsidiarity, makes matters so much more difficult for us since our recognition of the need for greater public involvement was the very reason why it was drafted in the first place. The treaty now gives people the opportunity to lodge appeals; it enables us to speak with one voice where powers are at the European level, but also makes us hold back more when they are located elsewhere. The simple request I have to make of you – and yes, I know it will be hard for me to make myself heard – is that you should not commit an historic mistake by preventing Europe from taking a step in that very direction in which many of you want it to go.
After all, the only practical thing we can do is to carry out confidential consultations and find out, for a start, precisely what objections the various Member States are having to deal with. The time for highly generalised debates about whether the thing is needed in the first place and how one should go about this or that is long gone; we now have to tackle very specific things, or else I do not think we are going to achieve our objective.
Let me reiterate something to which I only very discreetly alluded in my speech earlier, that those who are so keen on enlargement – and I am not necessarily one of them – must be aware that, if they, at the same time, take a sceptical view of the constitutional treaty, then, the present legal basis being what it is, enlargement is not going to happen."@en1
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