Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-167"
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"en.19991118.7.4-167"2
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"Mr President, in the first draft of the Dimitrakopoulos-Leinen report on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference, the following preliminary clause could be read, “Considering the rate of abstention from the last European elections, testifying to the growing disaffection of the citizens with regard to the current running of the Union, etc.” The Committee on Constitutional Affairs, no doubt aghast at such an admission, deemed it more prudent to eliminate this clause, with an overwhelming majority. And my group has not subsequently managed to have it reintegrated.
I feel this anecdote is significant since is clearly shows the spirit in which this report was drawn up. There is a refusal to see that the more federal Europe is becoming, the more distant it is becoming from the peoples of Europe, and the more disaffected they are becoming from it. Sweeping aside this niggling detail, and many others too, the Commission feels more comfortable in proposing yet more federalism, extending majority voting to the Council, and constitutionalisation of the Treaties.
It is the same attitude of deliberately closing ones eyes to the facts which prevailed when it came to discussing enlargement. People are acting as if extending qualified majority voting, i.e. extending the powers of coercion over minority countries, was going to solve all our problems. This is serious self-delusion. Standardisation has already gone as far as it can within the Europe of the Fifteen. This can be clearly seen with the embargo on British beef and it is unrealistic to believe that it is possible to go further, with yet more constraints, within a Europe of thirty members.
Two years ago, the Amsterdam Council already came up against this problem and did not manage to solve it. The forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference will be no more successful in solving it if it continues to work on the same bases.
The fact is, we need a Europe which is more flexible and accords greater respect to its nations. I gave the principles of this in a minority opinion appended to the Dimitrakopoulos-Leinen report, and the Union for a Europe of Nations Group developed the consequences of this by proposing twenty-one amendments, all rejected, alas, by the majority in Parliament. But the day will have to come when this House acknowledges the impasse in which it is trapping itself by championing a monolithic Europe."@en1
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