Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-231"
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"en.19991117.7.3-231"2
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"Mr President, is our Parliament really aware of what is at stake in the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference? Sometimes I doubt it. When I see, in the text of the report, that we are capable of pushing absurdity to the point of deliberately limiting the number of our own representatives at the debating table to two, I say to myself, there are definitely some people in this Chamber who are scared of their own shadow. This IGC, however, opens up a narrow historical window enabling what is essential to meet up with what is possible. Because, in the face of the challenges that the new century will present, morally we do not have the right to be satisfied with the off-cuts of institutional reform that are the left-overs from Amsterdam. Codecision must become the general rule. Our Parliament must obtain, as in any democracy worthy of the name, full budgetary authority over expenditure as well as over revenue. We must equip Europe with the tools of equity, security and solidarity. Let us say it: it is high time that we committed our continent to a constituent process.
The only real limiting factor is not our democratic imagination, it is our House’s political will. And if we were not really capable of freeing ourselves from the yoke of the current regulations, then any further reform would become impossible. Without real reforms, Europe, which is often helpless with fifteen Members, will be sterile when it has thirty. As Commissioner Barnier understands perfectly well, today’s developments must facilitate tomorrow’s developments. And who else but us, MEPs elected by direct universal suffrage by the European people, could have greater legitimacy for conducting and concluding this tremendous process. Parliaments often vote on laws, but more rarely do they write history. Because this honour has been granted to us today, I ask that we prove worthy of it. I ask that we show political courage."@en1
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