Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-24-Speech-2-013"
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"en.20080624.3.2-013"2
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".
Mr President, Slovenia is the first of the enlargement countries to hold the Presidency and we have looked on with sympathy and great interest.
Our assessment, however, is that although the Slovenian Presidency has genuinely done its best, it has not managed to assert itself against the bigger players or to make headway on dossiers, such as ‘rights and migration’ in particular, by putting forward a different point of view from a new country more open and more alert to the rights of migrants and new citizens. On important issues such as the ‘energy package’ and the ‘Mediterranean Union’, even attitudes to China as regards the Olympic Games, we await the French Presidency. During these six months, the barefaced action of two or three of the larger players on various issues – from cars to waste and foreign policy – shows that the Council and its Presidency are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the extent that we are today celebrating events such as ‘Navy Day’, which may be significant, but are certainly not priorities.
What can we then say about the words and deeds of the new Italian government which is trying to make the exceptional, the arbitrary and the interests of the leader the only point of reference for resolving all problems – from waste, to illegal immigrants, to the control of justice – while the Council stands by in complete silence and the Commission is far too cautious and timid. I should like to know – and do not brand me anti-Italian – what would have happened if any of the candidate countries, from Croatia to Turkey, had announced measures along the lines of those being planned by the Italian government as regards the waste decree or the security decree, where between turning illegal immigration into an offence and soldiers in the streets, the aim is to bring about the suspension of all proceedings which have the misfortune to have timescales and features similar to those against Prime Minister Berlusconi.
What can we say about the issue of working time, where the Council, under its Presidency, has once again completely undermined its talk, Mr President, about the need to bring citizens closer to Europe: because the message that has been sent out loud and clear is one of ‘more work for less pay’. More work, fewer rights, less legal certainty, because what ultimately matters is the balance of power between states. These are more than communication problems! What we are faced with here is a real erosion of the European Union’s credibility and its supposed ‘guiding’ role and, in its place, an increasingly evident executive which drowns out and marginalises the smaller countries, such as Slovenia and Ireland, as well as the Community institutions. Not least this Parliament, compelled by what can only be seen as blackmail to find agreements which a large proportion of public opinion finds genuinely hard to swallow, such as the ‘waste directive’ or, even worse, the ‘returns directive’. And then the Commission, increasingly in the thrall of every pressure group apart from that of citizens, as is borne out by the very recent Kallas communication on lobbies.
We should reflect on this and we should do so with our Irish friends: on the fact that a Europe of common institutions, enfeebled by the pressures from economic and national lobbies, cannot but become more and more remote from and irrelevant to citizens. Subsidiarity is not the issue, Mr Nassauer! The problem is the complete lack of ambition and any attempt to organise a common response to European citizens, not just the Irish, but all of them! It is here, ladies and gentlemen, that we must act. We should not just reflect on but actually find the European meaning of our existence and vigorously assert our ambitions of leadership in the field of citizens’ rights, migration, climate change and the shift of the European economy towards criteria of sustainability.
It is only in that way, Mr Schulz – and not just by giving money to the new poor – that we Europeans will be able not only to overcome the institutional challenges but also to win the next elections and press ahead."@en1
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