Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-15-Speech-3-102"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20101215.6.3-102"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, I am also very happy to be here with you this morning because we have accomplished very good things together. Just one year after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, we are holding a discussion on the forthcoming adoption of the regulation on the citizens’ initiative. As Mr Lamassoure said, we are introducing a totally new layer of participatory democracy which will complement the representative democracy in which we operate in the European Union.
I greatly appreciate, therefore, the fact that we are aiming at agreement on the first reading, because this will allow our citizens to use this new instrument much faster than initially expected.
Let me thank you once again for the excellent cooperation with all the rapporteurs, with Ms Gurmai, with our Chair, Ms Wallis, with Mr Häfner and Mr Lamassoure. As I said, all of them brought very new and very important ideas to make this proposal better than the initial proposal from the Commission.
I would also like to thank personally Olivier Chastel, because he demonstrated his enormous ability for consensus building. I know how difficult it was in the Council, how many divergences he had to overcome, and thanks to his efforts and thanks to the excellent work of the Belgian Presidency we now have this wide consensus also in the Council.
But for the first time we are offering citizens an innovative way of expressing their wishes, interacting with the institutions and shaping the agenda of the European Union. I believe it is a very important as a means of widening the European space. It is very important in terms of bringing more European topics to the national capitals and creating European-wide debate. We all know that the European Union needs this very much.
To achieve the potential benefits the Treaty of Lisbon and the citizens’ initiative can bring us, we need to establish a clear procedure. It was very clear, from the public consultations and the consultations with the European Parliament, that we needed a procedure which would be easy, understandable, user-friendly and well-balanced. I think we have achieved this goal. That was really thanks to the in-depth discussions we had, very often here in the European Parliament. I would like to thank all of you for organising a number of hearings, not only in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) and the Committee on Petitions (PETI) but also in most of the political groups, because these hearings have been very important for all of us. I can assure you that they served as a very important source of inspiration and new creative ideas which, in the end, helped us improve the initial Commission proposal.
I appreciate also the innovative way in which the European Parliament dealt with this initiative. We had four rapporteurs from two different committees. Alain Lamassoure called them the gang of four. I must say it was a very nice gang. It was a pleasure working with all of you. It was a pleasure for me to receive your new creative input into our common thinking, because each of you approached the subject from a different angle and brought your own experience to bear on how to improve the initial proposal of the Commission. I really appreciate it.
Thanks to this new innovative approach we achieved broad consensus within the European Parliament. I am particularly pleased about the very clear vote in AFCO.
One of the important ideas which came from the rapporteurs was what kind of follow-up we should give to the citizens’ initiative. I believe the idea that an appropriately high-level Commission representative should receive the organisers of the initiative after its successful completion came from the European Parliament. The idea of organising hearings as a compulsory stage during which we could discuss the goals of the initiative more broadly also came from this Chamber.
I would like to stress that we are very pleased and satisfied that these public hearings will be organised on neutral ground, here at the European Parliament, because this will ensure that the Commission will not be in the uncomfortable position of being judge and jury at the same time. The Commission will be represented at those hearings at an appropriately high level, where possible by the Commissioner or Director-General with responsibility for the subject, and will carefully follow the debate.
I would like to assure you, and through you all European citizens, that we in the Commission are absolutely conscious of the importance and the value of one million citizens supporting a particular proposal. We will treat it with respect and great care.
The only regret I have in this debate is that we will need to wait a little while before the citizens’ initiative can be fully used. But we have to recognise that, if we want to offer our citizens an improved service, we need to change some internal rules in the Member States and we have to develop the software for the online collection system. I am sure we will do it in the prescribed time, however, and European citizens will have a chance to use this initiative as soon as possible."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples