Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-13-Speech-2-011"
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"en.20071113.4.2-011"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, may I start by saying to you, Commission President, that having heard your minatory words last year about the attendance of Members of this House, there are more Members than Commissioners in the Chamber today, and I trust that you have noted that fact with gratification. On behalf of the PPE-DE Group, may I also voice some words of encouragement: we encourage you, during the coming year – the crucial year for the ratification of the new Treaty – to utilise your Commission's most important competence, namely the right to bring forward legislative proposals for Europe, in a way which ensures that you address the issues of serious concern to citizens effectively and utilise the opportunities at your disposal to narrow the gap between citizens and the European Union.
We support your general approach as set forth in your programme, as well as the priorities you have chosen, from growth and jobs – whose success is crucial to underpin social cohesion in Europe – to many other detailed aspects, up to and including migration and research. My colleagues will focus on individual issues.
We welcome the fact that you have indeed taken up various proposals arising from the structured dialogue with the committees. We would like to see this dialogue being intensified even further. We would also welcome it if your planning were not only to cover the first few months of 2009 but were perhaps to encompass a two-year cycle which could be developed further on a year-by-year basis. What we feel is missing is an indicative time schedule, and we also see a gap between your programme and the budgetary procedure, which it would be sensible to close.
You intend to bring forward a total of 79 legislative initiatives and around the same number of non-legislative actions. If we look at this in terms of your stated intention to reduce bureaucracy, I am not sure whether you are genuinely serving that objective. The items of legislation whose repeal you have announced notably include many which would have expired anyway. To that extent, reducing bureaucracy is more about 'talking a good game' than achieving a real and effective objective.
Next year is the year of the new Treaty. You have the opportunity – and I am confident that this Treaty will come into force – to incorporate this Treaty into your programme already at this stage. The Treaty will bring in important new elements: operability, transparency and democracy. It will also bring in an element which is vital for us and to which I recommend you devote some attention, and that is the principle of subsidiarity. A new debate on subsidiarity is starting in Europe, and the main partner for that debate is you, Mr President, and your Commission.
A storm of protest erupted in some parts of Germany a few days ago over the issue of fruit and apple wines. I do not want to discuss the public reaction to this issue in detail, but let me say this, Mr President: what sort of spirit is at large in an administration which, at one bureaucratic stroke, obliterates regional traditions which go back hundreds of years, and does so in such a cold and insensitive way? There is a problem with this approach, and it is your problem, Mr President. It is a problem with your Commission. You now have an opportunity, in the spirit of the new Treaty, to create a new culture of subsidiarity. That is the opportunity – the great opportunity – for your Commission to achieve more consensus among the population at large, and it is an opportunity which we in the PPE-DE Group would expressly encourage you to seize with both hands."@en1
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