Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-21-Speech-3-184"
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"en.20091021.9.3-184"2
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"Mr President, some fellow Members have seen fit to use their speeches to try to give us lessons in democracy. May I point out, therefore, that in both the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, whose opinion I drafted, we made sure that the discussion and vote on our respective texts were not held until the outcome of the Irish referendum had become known. We did so out of respect for the verdict the Irish people were to give. They did say ‘yes’, fortunately, but they could have said ‘no’. We wanted to take account of this, and also of next week’s European Council meeting. Hence, we had to accomplish our discussion and texts in an extremely short period of time. The same fellow Members who seek to give lessons in democracy have, of course, complained about this, too. I digress.
Today, we are experiencing a particularly important point in time. Our texts expressing our opinion on what the future European External Action Service should look like herald a new era for the European Union. Those of us who have been following the evolution of the Union for years and remember the first modest steps on foreign policy, let alone security and defence policy, of the Treaties – first Maastricht, then Amsterdam – may have thought, as I did at the time, that we would never see this day, that we would never manage to lay down the foundations of a common European diplomacy.
Those of us who have watched attentively as the ideas on this have evolved will also remember that, just a few months ago, some of our national diplomatic services were absolutely unwilling to accept a kind of instant ‘big bang’, with all the current delegations brought under the authority of the future High Representative from the very first day. I am absolutely delighted about this.
My own political and governmental responsibilities in my previous political incarnations have taught me that none of this will be simple. Yet we are experiencing an important point in time, and I hope that this report will be adopted by a very large majority."@en1
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