Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-16-Speech-3-019"
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"en.20080116.2.3-019"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank the President-in-Office for the nice visit we had to Slovenia before Christmas. President-in-Office, I hope you will lead the European Council better than you led the meeting group leaders had with you: you took most of the speaking time yourself and you said nothing we did not know in advance; you did not allow your ministers, whom I would expect to know their subjects, to answer most of our questions; and you did not send the answers in writing afterwards. A parliament also contains an opposition with certain rights.
Yesterday I received a petition from 571 Slovenian journalists criticising you for not respecting their press freedom. Will you allow an independent investigation?
Last week you were reported to have asked Portugal to cancel the possible referendum supported by most Portuguese voters. May I remind you of the existing Nice Treaty, which requires you to take all decisions as close to citizens as possible? To cancel a referendum is a violation of this article. Member States can be criticised but not punished, because ratification is still a national competence. The behaviour of a presidency and the European Commission is a Community affair. You have to respect the national ratification procedures. If you say something, you should remind Member States of the joint legal obligation to legislate as close to the citizens as possible.
You violate the Treaty, and so does the European Commission when it does not behave as guardian of this Treaty article. You are part of a political agreement among prime ministers to avoid a referendum. This agreement is a violation of the Treaty. The Commission should have protested it instead of supporting the attempt to avoid the peoples of Europe. Read Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union once more: ‘Decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen’. What a wonderful sentence that would be, if it were implemented!
The Lisbon Treaty was decided in as closed a way as possible and as far away as possible from the voters. Now it seems that only Ireland can save our European democracy. But the Council could at least publish a consolidated version of the Lisbon Treaty, so that you would be able to read what you have signed. On 17 December 2007, Hungary signed a text it had not even received! This is not a way to decide close to the citizens or the Members of Parliament."@en1
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