Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-13-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20070313.6.2-015"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it is nice that you were able to come after all, Commissioner. We are glad you are here. We have no cause to be over critical, since the presence of Members is in inverse proportion to the importance of this project. This debate makes sense if, when formulating the final legislative programme in the autumn, the Commission listens to what Parliament has to say.
A number of my fellow Members will be commenting on the details. The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats) is in principle prepared not only to give the Commission’s work its political backing in Parliament, but also to go along with the objectives it defined at the beginning of its mandate: prosperity, solidarity, security and freedom. I am pleased to confirm that, starting from these objectives, you are also developing the correct political measures for the areas on which we now have to work: growth, employment, climate change, energy, the knowledge-based society, consolidation of enlargement. We can argue about the details.
I have one criticism of what you say, Commissioner. You announce a common European asylum system for 2010. Forgive my saying so, but the Treaties open the way for minimum standards in these fields, but not for a harmonised European asylum system. Please check very carefully where you are leaving the level of the Treaty here. That is a sore point for me.
This legislative programme is interesting not for what it contains but for what it does not contain. You say in the introduction that these measures meet the citizens’ expectations of where Europe should act. You paint a picture of a Union that is able to respond to the challenges of globalisation. Over all, you draw a comparatively rosy picture of this European Union, especially so far as the citizens’ expectations are concerned.
If that is the case, then why did the citizens of France and the Netherlands say such a clear No to Europe? The Treaty itself hardly gave them any reason to, hardly any of them read it. There is a deep unease about the European Union, and if you investigate that unease, you find there is a reason for it — not the only reason, but a reason nevertheless – and that is European bureaucracy. It gives many people the feeling they are having their minds made up for them and having policies forced upon them, being exposed to decisions where nobody understands why they have to be taken in Europe and not in the Member States.
This feeling of being treated like children provokes rejection, leads to falling turnouts in elections and, if the process continues, it will boost political forces that are really against Europe, and that ought to worry us. We in Parliament, too, must ask ourselves how long we can claim to be the European nations’ legitimate representatives if the election turnout is always less than 50%.
One of the sources of unease is European legislation. That is why this is the right time to talk about it. You speak yourself, Commissioner, of an ambitious drive towards better regulation. How true and how worthy of support! You have our full political support in that. So far, however, you have only mentioned the target: a 25% reduction. You do not say how that target will be achieved. Better regulation is more than anything something which is meticulous about respecting the limits of subsidiarity and respecting the competence of the Member States rather than craftily pushing those limits back.
The European Commission has in its hands a key to regaining the public’s confidence. We also need a new culture of subsidiarity. Every piece of draft legislation should take care not to regulate every detail, but to weigh up carefully where the Member States’ regulative competence begins.
Point the way, Commissioner! Less central lawmaking will be Europe’s gain."@en1
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