Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-25-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20091125.6.3-017"2
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"Mr President, first of all may I wish Mr Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton well in their new roles, and I hope they are able to establish templates for their posts which will endure.
If the European Council is to have a semi-permanent president, it should be someone who takes a low-key but practical approach to building a consensus among the Member States where this is possible and desirable. If we are to have a reinforced High Representative for Foreign Affairs, the main task should be working closely with Member States in coordinating common policies where they have shared objectives.
These appointments should be an opportunity to put a stop, once and for all, to the nightmare vision of an ever more centralised and bureaucratic European foreign and security policy, in favour of one that is based on willing cooperation amongst our Member States.
The appointment of Baroness Ashton, in particular, as a currently serving Commissioner must have been a source of particular happiness for President Barroso, though this must not afford an opportunity for the Commission to assume greater power in its hands rather than in the hands of the democratic institutions of Europe.
But having spent a decade obsessed with its own institutions, the European Union now needs to get back to business. It is often said that the citizens of our Member States do not understand Europe, and, if they did, it would be more popular. But this misses a vital point. Our citizens do understand Europe’s self-absorption only too well. What they do not understand is why so much time, effort and resources are devoted to the institutional processes and so little to the policy outcomes which actually might make a difference to their lives.
Our citizens can see that our economies are in crisis, that unemployment is rising, that businesses are finding it harder to generate growth, that climate change is getting worse and that other parts of the world are becoming increasingly and dramatically more competitive.
Yet, when they turn to Europe, they find a Union which has devoted years to this institutional wrangling. Why should they care about the details of qualified majority voting if they have lost their jobs? Why should they be interested in the intricacies of codecision if their children face such an uncertain future?
I hope that the appointments last week can draw a line under these years of introspection. The European Union must now move on and concentrate on the real work at hand, in building dynamic and competitive economies and in creating a strong global trading system and, specifically during the course of the weeks ahead, in securing a really effective agreement on climate change.
I admit that the words from the Swedish Presidency and from President Barroso are encouraging in that respect. Let us hope that practical delivery in other areas, vital to all of our citizens, can now follow."@en1
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