Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-01-17-Speech-2-024-000"
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"en.20120117.4.2-024-000"2
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"Mr President, before explaining my reasons for congratulating you, I would like to thank your predecessors. The Presidents of the European Parliament whom I have known, like Jerzy Buzek, Hans-Gert Pöttering and Mr Borrell Fontelles, have always found their way of doing things, which always seemed to be appropriate to the challenges in hand. I would also like to thank the other candidates because they have once again shown how internal democracy works.
Mr President, I wish you every success. I know that you can be a thorn in people’s sides. On behalf of my group, I can say that we will certainly also play a similar role. I want to make a point here, too, for the women here in Parliament. Following in the footsteps of Simone Veil and Ms Fontaine, it would be wonderful if we, the women in Parliament, started preparing the ground today, so that the next President in the next legislature will be another female President.
Nonetheless, Mr President, the majority you have now achieved is a qualified majority. There are good reasons for this. In my opinion, what we have here is not a Social Democrat who has been elected to the highest office in the House, but rather a Social Democrat who has been elected to the highest office in the House and who has also been a fantastic parliamentarian.
You will remember that when you asked me what I thought of the idea of your standing for President of Parliament, I said: ‘What ever gave you that notion?’ I simply could not imagine how Martin Schulz would cope with the diplomatic constraints of this office, as our chief representative. I can imagine it perfectly well now. Firstly, I would like to express the hope that you will not relinquish your particular personal skills and that you will not allow the diplomatic formalities so often required of the President to stifle the spiky pugnacity that has made you such a difficult customer in this House, but that you will retain this bullish attitude in your new office, using it to good effect in your dealings with the President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, or Mr Van Rompuy, Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy.
The promise that you made in your personal campaign had something touching and almost naïve about it: if this ‘all for one’ principle works, then the principle of ‘one for all’ will work too. Parliament has played its part well today in setting the stage for a new regime. We can now expect serious debate in the House, however, and it will be necessary to prove that not only is Parliament’s new President prepared to take a different approach in debates, but also that Parliament is ready to stick to the objectives that it formulates.
This immediately brings me to the present disagreement with Viktor Orbán. Things went wrong during the discussions around the media laws, at a time when a lot still could have been achieved in Hungary. This was mainly because, in the end, Parliament finally left it up to the Commission to deal with the problems. We cannot allow this to happen again in the current disagreement with Hungary. Also, since the name of Yulia Tymoshenko has already been mentioned here, and I expressly applauded, let me say this: we cannot have a situation where Hungary, a Member State of the European Union, abandons the democratic values of the European Union at a time when the people of Russia have started on a path of opposition to controlled democracy and when the Ukrainians are in a desperate situation. Ladies and gentlemen, together with the institutions and our newly elected President, we must do all in our power to prevent this!
Martin Schulz, I believe you are assuming office at a time that is even more difficult than I believed before Christmas. I would never have believed that the last crisis summit really would have had no influence over further developments. I have just returned from Japan, where I saw how the Yen, the currency of a country with enormous problems, has sky-rocketed against the euro. That is not normal. There is no point in complaining about the rating agencies. The problem is that politicians have so little influence, that the rating agencies and the games of Chinese whispers played in the big banks have a bigger influence than political decisions in Europe; this is not normal and we need a calm and consistent approach. I do not believe that the whole Parliament is now populated with Social Democrats. However, many of the ideas for tackling this crisis put forward in this House and supported by a large majority must also be pursued to the end in our dealings with the Council and Commission. We need to put an end to our habit of agreeing to the next compromise before our ideas have even been aired."@en1
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