Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-01-Speech-3-073"
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"en.19991201.7.3-073"2
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"Mr President, the European Council of 10 and 11 December 1999 in Helsinki will launch the next Intergovernmental Conference intended to revise the EC Treaty with a view to enlargement. However, a minimalist agenda appears to have been set for this IGC, basically limited to the three points left open by the Treaty of Amsterdam: composition of the Commission, weighting of votes in Council and a further extension of qualified majority voting.
This agenda will not in any way help to solve the EU’s problems in terms of enlargement which is therefore likely to be undertaken under the worst institutional conditions.
We certainly understand the Council’s dislike of the shameless attempts by the Commission in recent months to force through, along the lines of the Dehaene report, the idea of another major federalist leap forward.
On the other hand, the Council is now accepting the inclusion on the agenda of a proposal of the same type, namely the extension of qualified majority voting. This was not even envisaged by the Amsterdam Protocol on the institutions, and appeared only in an annexed statement of three Member States. This proposal, inspired by the idea of a standardised and standardising Europe, is by no means the solution which will allow Europe to operate with 27 members or more.
In our opinion, if the Council really wants to carry out innovative work, it should ditch the Commission’s proposals and ignore the Amsterdam leftovers. It should put just one subject on the negotiating table, namely decision making in an enlarged Union. This one subject would mean having to jointly consider three consequences which are logically linked. These are qualified majority voting in certain cases, the enshrinement of the Luxembourg compromise in all cases and increased flexibility in cooperation according to a differentiated scale.
In this way, we would have to consider what really brings us together, without blindly accepting the
as a taboo area, and how the common institutions will operate in a Union which uses this differentiated scale. If we do not make this effort to change, if we hold on to rigid ideas like limpets to a rock, either enlargement will fail or the Union will be swept away. It is our choice."@en1
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