Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-07-06-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20100706.4.2-023"2
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Mr President, Mr Rodríguez Zapatero, you made an error in your approach. You thought that you were actually going to preside over Europe and have an influence on the gear-wheels that make the complex European machinery work. You came to believe this because that is what you let people around you announce, that the world was going to experience a stellar moment under your Presidency. None of this has come to pass.
Let us move on to some details. With regard to these six months of Spanish Presidency, I would like to make a distinction between its political management on the one hand, and the work that has been carried out by the workers in the engine rooms, on the other. It is the first of these that has failed, and that is due to a lack of adequate impetus from the Presidency of the Government, which has fashioned a European Presidency in accordance with the swing of the pendulum. However, I would like to highlight the efforts made by the workers and their estimable desire to serve Europe and Spain. It is a fact, Mr President, that Spain has magnificent professional staff, and it is to be regretted that they are marginalised to such an extent in day-to-day reality.
That said, it must be acknowledged that several praiseworthy initiatives have been adopted during these six months. Of these, I am pleased to mention the organ donation and transplantation plan, and the work carried out on the rights of patients with regard to cross-border healthcare.
The agreements on the new Europe 2020 strategy and, in particular, those relating to the European External Action Service, which are both still too fragile, are more up in the air.
What occurred with the European protection order for victims of violence against women was regrettable, and the basic Community patent yielded the same sombre result for the livelihoods of thousands of companies, blocked, in part, by the linguistic problems engendered by Spanish legislation.
However it is the large-scale political gestures that have provided a closing balance of spectacular failure: from the Mediterranean summit to the one between the European Union and the United States, with your own government being responsible for creating excessive expectations with regard to the latter meeting. However, we would have to agree that not being able to move forward with your policy with regard to Cuba has been highly positive for the Cubans.
Finally, the advances made on the road towards better European economic governance cannot be attributed in any way to your Presidency, which was resoundingly absent on all of the most important questions.
Goodbye, then, to the Spanish Presidency. I would like to draw one positive conclusion from this experience: my imagination as a convinced pro-European is excited when I think that this could mean the end of rotating presidencies as they have been conceived of to date. This would be good news, as until Europe strengthens its common institutions by solidly uniting their fragments, it will continue to run the risk of finding itself suffocating in the vacuum of irrelevance."@en1
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