Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-10-Speech-3-069"
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"en.20071010.17.3-069"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the motion for a resolution is a response to an invitation by the European Council in June. Article 9 A of the draft Treaty states that in future the composition of the Parliament will be a matter for secondary legislation. This will be a decision of the European Council, adopted by unanimity, on the initiative of the European Parliament and with its consent. The Council is inviting us to explain how this procedure should work. It wants to see us deal with this hot potato.
For our Parliament, this is a real political challenge. Are we capable of coming up with a reform that applies to ourselves? The last time we were asked to do this was in 2000, and Parliament did not manage to do it. For this reason the vote secured in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs is already a remarkable political result. We obtained a large majority: two thirds in the final vote and three quarters on the main point, the distribution of seats, in terms of actual numbers, between the Member States.
What is the problem we are facing? We should first remember that the current Parliament of 785 MEPs no longer complies with the new legal position resulting from the amended Treaty of Nice. It is this system that would apply, based on 736 MEPs, in the absence of any new decision. Up to now, in the Council and in Parliament, the Member States have been divided into categories: one supersize state, some large ones, some medium-sized, some small, etc. Each category has the same voting rights in the Council and the same number of seats in Parliament.
This is over! The future Treaty introduces two types of innovation in relation to this system. On the one hand, there are actual figures: a maximum of 750 MEPs, a ceiling of 96 and a minimum of 6 seats per Member State. On the other, there is a principle: between the maximum and minimum, the Member States must be represented according to degressive proportionality, and it is our job in Parliament to define this principle today, namely to choose how much proportionality and how much degressivity there is, or how over-represented the least populous countries are and how under-represented the most populous countries are.
Your committee is proposing that this principle should be translated in the following way: firstly, the minimum and maximum numbers set by the Treaty must be fully utilised. In particular, the use of the ceiling of 750 seats will give us a small reserve –as it were – of seats, so degressive proportionality can be applied without reducing the number of seats of any country. This is a fundamental political choice, and is absolutely necessary to obtain unanimity in the European Council.
Secondly, the larger the population of a country, the greater its entitlement to a large number of seats, of course. Thirdly, the larger the population of a country, the more inhabitants are represented by each of its Members of the European Parliament. So at present, a Spanish MEP represents more than 875 000 people, Mr President, while a German MEP represents only 832 000. Up to now, Germany has had twice the population of Spain. This anomaly will be put right by the allocation of four additional seats to Spain. In total, ten countries are affected by the proposed increases.
We are fully aware of the fact that this is only a temporary solution. It would be desirable to come up with some sort of mathematical formula that would automatically apply to any future enlargements, but the tight timescale given to us did not allow this. However, the resolution makes some recommendations on this point. Similarly, we had to use the only population figures available, those from Eurostat, since we did not have any figures from the citizens themselves. Adrian Severin will say more about this.
Finally, we would warn our fellow members against amendments that contradict the fundamental principles of the report and will have the effect, depending on the case, of giving the large countries an abnormal advantage over the smaller countries or small countries over the large countries, in which case our work will have been in vain, because without unanimity in the Council we will have to stick with the 736 seats of the Treaty of Nice.
So, ladies and gentlemen, please refrain from bidding up your countries. We have spent the afternoon proclaiming that we are the only democratic institution protecting the interests of Europeans before the other institutions, above national egotism. Now, today, we have the perfect opportunity to show that our actions are faithful to our words."@en1
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