Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-16-Speech-3-018"
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"en.20091216.3.3-018"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the concept of transition has been mentioned several times today and I believe that it an appropriate term to describe the Swedish Presidency. It was a presidency of transition from one treaty, the Treaty of Nice, which had proved to be totally impracticable, to the Treaty of Lisbon, which is overloaded with expectations, not all of which, in my opinion, can be met, as the Treaty of Lisbon cannot be the end of institutional development in Europe. In this regard, we must be careful not to expect the Treaty of Lisbon to fulfil all of our wishes for all solutions to all of the problems of the world, because we can see how difficult it is to work with the Treaty of Lisbon by all the points of order that have been raised.
I would like to begin with the institutional problems that this treaty has created. We still have the Swedish Prime Minister here today. Who will represent the Council Presidency next time? Mr Van Rompuy, the rotating Council Presidency, then the President of the Commission, then Baroness Ashton – if they all speak then at least, for the first time, for the first four speeches we will not have this permanent PPE conference, and we will then have Baroness Ashton and hence a proper socialist, who will stir things up. That is definitely one benefit.
Of course, I do not know whether it will be Mr Van Rompuy or Mr Zapatero who will attend, but thank you, Mr Langen. If you already know that it is Mr Zapatero who will attend, you have made a useful contribution for once. Thank you very much.
The Swedish Presidency was a presidency of transition, but also a presidency that once again had to experience Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy playing their cards very close to their chests to the very end, letting the current Presidency run its course – while the public said ‘it does not know what is going on, it cannot do anything’ – and has to pay the price for their tactical game. That has been the fate of Mr Reinfeldt over the last few months. Thank goodness, that has now come to an end. That is the progress we have made with the Treaty of Lisbon: a bit more transparency in our institutional structures. And surely something else, too: the enhancement of the power of the European Parliament. However, more power for the European Parliament also means that the other institutions will have to deal with Parliament. For the President of the European Council, this means that he will have to coordinate decisions that he wishes to prepare in the Council – legislative decisions at least – with Parliament. He would be wise not to view the President of the European Parliament as a spectator at the Council meetings, but as the representative of an institution that has been given greater power. That is what I expect from Mr Van Rompuy, for example.
The Council, and the Commission, too, would be well advised to try to seek a majority in Parliament, on the basis of this new treaty, that will also be able to meet the social, environmental and finance policy challenges that they themselves formulate in their programmes because, for legislation, they ultimately need a qualified majority in this Parliament if they want to push through their initiatives. Therefore, the Commission would be well advised to seek a majority throughout the whole breadth of Parliament, which is perhaps something that does not go well with the fact that Members of the Commission are deputy leaders of European parties and are therefore evidence of the one-sidedness of certain political trends. That is something, Mr Barroso, that you need to think very seriously about.
The Swedish Presidency has put in a lot of effort. I will gladly admit that here. However, ultimately – and this is not your fault, Mr Reinfeldt, but the fault of the system – it has had no influence on the big decisions, including those that are currently being made in Copenhagen, because a single rotating presidency cannot influence very much at all, it can only coordinate, and there is a difference between coordinating and influencing. Influencing the supervision of the financial markets, climate change, the efforts for economic recovery – these are things that only Europe as a whole can do, with its institutions in collaboration. I therefore believe that the Treaty of Lisbon represents progress. The fact that the Swedish Presidency ultimately put it in place seems to me to have been the big success of this transition Presidency."@en1
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