Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-13-Speech-2-279"
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"en.20071113.31.2-279"2
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"Madam President, my Group supports this proposal, and thinks this is a practical set of adjustments to the current legislation and that it is actually useful that European political parties should have the ability to do research and so on through their foundations and have the flexibility to carry money over from one year to the next and so on.
There was the issue of the legal base: Parliament and the Commission agreed, and the Council disagreed with us on that. But it is the substance that is more important than the legal base, and I dare even say that it is better to have legal certainty than to face a challenge later on this matter in the courts. So we are happy with that and we are happy to seek first-reading agreements with the Council by postponing the vote.
Let me just add though that, for the reasons the rapporteur himself said, the European political parties are important because they express the political choices we face as a European Union. The media too often focuses only on the Council, and especially the European Council, as if it is some sort of gladiatorial combat between countries. Did Britain win today or did the French? Did the Germans make a deal with the Italians? Yet when those very same subjects come to this Parliament, you rarely see all the Members from one country voting one way and all the Members of another country voting another way, because we are making political choices – policy choices. Do we want higher environmental standards but at greater cost, or not? There will be people in every country on both sides of the argument, and the same with most of the choices we face. Political groups and political parties highlight the fact that it is political, policy choices we are making in our Union, not a combat between one national viewpoint and another national viewpoint.
That is why they need to be strengthened in their work; that will help citizens have a grasp for the sort of issues that we are dealing with; that will make our Union work better."@en1
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