Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-252"
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"en.19991117.7.3-252"2
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"Mr President, thanks are due to the two rapporteurs. Finland’s Portugal’s and France’s Presidencies of the Council are to be requested to comply with the proposals in this report which is quite rightly based upon the criticism, partly by this European Parliament, of the decisions in Amsterdam. For no other reason than that Mr Tsatsos has again referred to the matter, I should like to emphasise that the proposal in subparagraph 5 is really of central importance. It is important that we obtain a package proposal for global reform in which the important questions relating to majority voting are dealt with just as much as those relating to reform of the institutions and other important themes. I think that the most important thing here is that we consider how the European Union might be provided with a constitution. This demand can hardly be emphasised enough, for Europe can only come of age when it provides itself with a constitution.
The purposes and goals of the European Union are too unclear at the moment. The European Parliament has quite rightly already submitted several draft constitutions, and I think that these ought to make it clear that Europe is more than a market. We must therefore be thinking in terms of a Brussels Republic, a unique community of States without historical precedent.
Whether the discussion of a European constitution will imbue Europe’s citizens with more enthusiasm for Europe is unclear. On account of the problems entailed in legitimising an area or a market without the structure of a State, the attempt does need, however, to be made to inspire such enthusiasm. This must also go hand in hand with the development of a European civil society and of a European public. We are seeing a change worldwide in the essential character of national sovereignty because States do not have unlimited freedom of action, either at home or abroad, and their ability to form policies and solve problems is limited by the realities of international relations and of trans-national forms of interdependence and interaction. This is particularly apparent in connection with the economy, trade and competition. It is precisely in this area, too, that it is very important to move from the principle of unanimity to majority voting. The European Union must become better able to act and it therefore needs a new separation of powers through a catalogue of competences.
In view of the changed circumstances, a new system for the separation of powers must be devised which augments the classical separation of powers as prescribed by Montesquieu with a new form of separation of powers at different levels. We need integrated multi-level decision-making processes. The coordination processes at present prescribed are inadequate to the task of organising European added value. That is particularly clear from the difficulties between economic union and monetary union and the difficulties between the political union and the economic and monetary union. Since we cannot boost democracy, through interinstitutional agreements in this area, we also, in fact, require a revision of the Treaty in this regard."@en1
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