Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-10-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20071010.16.3-038"2
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"Mr President, anyone who has seen how governments have been attacking the Constitution over the past year, making it unrecognisable and illegible and robbing it of its spirit and European charisma, must acknowledge that all this has nothing at all to do with what the citizens wanted – even those who said no in France and the Netherlands.
Anyone, however, who was able to observe the patience and time spent on what is now happening in the run-up to the Intergovernmental Conference must see that the governments have been attacking the structure of this Constitution like termites with their lawyers and state chancelleries. Grain by grain, element by element, this Constitution has been dragged out. I am really wondering why nobody is asking the governments what they are pushing here. Is it really only their own power, is it really lack of awareness of people’s expectations or is it plain nationalism that we see rising again in Europe?
The language! Today a delegation of Members of the Austrian Parliament asked me: how am I to make your ‘yes’ to this Constitution comprehensible to anybody? I cannot read it. I cannot understand it any more. I no longer know what the texts, references, footnotes and traps mean.
I believe that at the end of this Intergovernmental Conference a Europe is looming in which for the first time in history people will no longer be able to recognise the political order under which they are living. And then you will lose a lot of supporters, even those who have fought for this Constitution for many years.
Fundamental rights! Vice-President of the Commission, you invoke the spirit of compromise. But why do you not invoke the nature of universal fundamental and human rights, which make it unthinkable for us to form a community of values in which a few states declare ‘but I do not belong to this community of values’. How are we to counter a Mr Putin and tell him: we are a huge community of values in favour of universal human rights – except for a few of us. This is such a gap in Europe’s credibility that we cannot invoke the spirit of compromise here! This is a completely different spirit. It is a great political demon that dominates here. I do not believe that what is happening here at the moment will meet with the citizens’ approval, which we no longer intend to seek."@en1
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