Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-23-Speech-2-091"
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"en.20071023.7.2-091"2
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"Mr President, as a former member of the Convention on the Future of Europe, as the only national parliamentarian involved in the negotiations and as a convinced opponent of the Constitution since the very beginning I am glad to say that in Lisbon common sense has prevailed, at least to some extent.
The very concept of a European Constitution was erroneous from the beginning. I am glad that it has been abandoned and I am glad that my country was among those who contributed to this. The EU is not a state, it will never be one and therefore it cannot have a constitution. It has to be built on an intergovernmental treaty, whereby the Member States, the national states, remain the corner stones of the whole process of European integration.
With regards to the content, each of us likes and dislikes certain aspects of it. On the one hand, I am personally delighted with the reinforcement of the role of the national parliaments and the national executives through the so-called flexibility clause. What I do not like, on the other hand, is a reduction of the national right of veto. However, being a realist I am aware that we have reached the limits of what is possible.
What I see as important, nonetheless, is the fact that for the very first time in history of the EU an artificial concept elaborated at the green table had to some extent to be reworked after being tested against reality. This leads me to hope that the EU will continue in the future to demonstrate that it can move away from certain concepts that prove to be unfit, such as, in my opinion, the 50-year-old obsolete federalist model. It leads me to hope that the EU will be able to move towards a genuine, flexible, decentralised intergovernmental organisation capable of coping with the challenges of the 21st century.
Mr President, I trust, however, that Parliament will not succumb to the temptation to revive the already dead constitutional idea, because it would merely illustrate that it is an ivory tower."@en1
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