Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-20-Speech-3-043"
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"en.20080220.3.3-043"2
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"Mr President, Madam Vice-President, President-in-Office of the Council, I can no longer understand the speeches by the representatives of the United Kingdom Independence Party and other parties. I was taught that the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy delivered full democratic legitimisation. That is what is happening here. We have been elected by the voters and will make a decision, just as our colleagues in the national parliaments do, and we have full democratic authority to do so. What is going on here, in a populist manner, is the destruction of the authority of parliamentary democracy, and you will have to take responsibility for this.
The second point that I would like to mention here, and for this I thank Mr Corbett and Mr Méndez de Vigo, is that it is clear that this Treaty closes a democratic loophole in the European Union. Full codecision rights for the European Parliament, the election of the Commission President by the European Parliament, the obligation for international treaties to be ratified by the European Parliament, the strengthening of the national parliaments – I do not want to go into detail. What we are doing here in the European Union is unique, as we no longer resolve the different interests of our peoples and among our peoples, which will always be present, with tanks and guns, as used to happen, but with debates and democratic voting.
That is the real, magnificent difference compared with what has constituted European history thus far, and all this on the basis of equality of the States and people groups. We should take our bearings from this. It has been the good fortune of Western Europe for 60 years, and since European reunification in 1990, large areas of Europe have shared in this good fortune. Now we want to strengthen this, so that this internal peace process will give us a better ability to make decisions through the Treaty, and so that we can meet the challenges of the future in this world and can overcome the problems of energy security, external security policy, terrorism and many others. This is the answer to these challenges. Mr Méndez de Vigo quoted Paul Valéry, and I would like to quote him again: ‘Europe will either unite or be the appendix of the Asian continent.’ That is the point. Does Europe have a chance of survival, by working together, by combining forces and giving them democratic authority and guidance, or will we as Europeans disappear in the global order?"@en1
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