Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-14-Speech-2-057"
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"en.19991214.4.2-057"2
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"The collective resignation of the Commission, last spring, following the report of the Committee of Wise Men, which this House had called for, marked the end of an era. It did away with the perception of Europe as over-technocratic and over-secretive. Your vigilant scrutiny of the use of European funds showed your determination to exercise your powers to the full. We must put an end once and for all to the idea that the European Parliament has few powers. Each successive treaty which has been concluded on the way to the present Union has increased the European Parliament’s powers and responsibilities. First of all it was given budgetary powers, then the Treaty of Maastricht gave it the status of a co-legislator, and this status was then strengthened by the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam a few months ago.
We must, of course, do more to coordinate our economic policies more effectively, consolidate our social model and create a single area of freedom, security and justice. But first of all, we must explain ever more clearly to our citizens all the benefits which the Union already offers them, all the guarantees it provides, how it protects them and improves their lives. We must explain to them in simple terms how it works. We marshalled all the resources required to do this in connection with the euro. Its appearance in the form of notes and coins will radically alter our citizens’ attitudes and habits. It will prompt them to think and act as Europeans in their everyday lives. We are preparing actively for this genuine cultural revolution and the transition to the euro has been accepted so readily by our peoples because we gave ourselves the means to explain its implications and ensure that they were understood.
We must adopt the same approach and implement a broader range of information campaigns in order to ensure that the European project as a whole, our institutions and our policies are better understood. The budget resources needed will have to be released. We will also have to mobilise the efforts of all our political leaders and you, who have been elected by universal suffrage, will have to be in the vanguard and show the way. But if we are to secure the support of all our citizens, ladies and gentlemen, we must also be capable of making the dream of Europe a reality. We must create a citizens’ Europe in which each individual gradually comes to see that he or she has a role to play. We must create a common identity which is respectful of national identities, respectful of the peoples who make up the Union, respectful of their languages and cultures. Our peoples do not wish to be swallowed up by Europe. Quite the reverse: through Europe, they want to give new meaning to their existence. We have a duty to build this great common house in which each individual nevertheless feels at home. A house in which everyone lives together, in a spirit of solidarity, but in which each individual retains his or her identity.
We shall secure that support by stressing what we hold in common: a certain concept of mankind and of its freedom, dignity and rights, a social model springing from our common history and based on a tradition of collective bargaining, protection against the ups and downs of life and a State which acts as a guarantor of social cohesion. This is why France wishes to see the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights adopted during its Presidency. Your Parliament will play a vital part in its drafting, alongside the Member States and national parliaments. The Charter, setting out rights and obligations, will provide the framework, the references and the substance of European citizenship.
European citizenship also means a similar attachment to our own identities and histories, and a long tradition of links between our national cultures, thinkers and artists; this is a tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages and which gave us humanism – in short, everything which underpins our European civilisation. We must never forget that Europe took root in the soil of the human spirit. That is the Europe that we must nourish and encourage to grow, so as to make Europe loved, especially by our young people.
This is why France will give priority, during its Presidency, to education and knowledge, and to exchanges between universities and laboratories, so as to enable young people, students, researchers or technicians, young graduates seeking work or young workers to widen their horizons to embrace the whole of Europe. To that end, France will present to its partners an ambitious practical programme for encouraging mobility. We must help the new generations to develop their European consciousness.
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, you are the parliamentarians who will usher Europe into the next millennium. It is you who, together with the Member States and the Commission, will prepare Europe to face the great challenges of the future. Let us beware of tracing out today the contours of a finished Europe. Europe is a project, but it is also a process. Even the boldest of the founding fathers did not imagine the euro. Let us measure with pride the road that we have travelled, and reflect together on our ambitions for tomorrow.
Our history, together with the Renaissance, makes this incumbent upon us; over five centuries Europe developed a dazzling civilisation, and then the shock of excessive nationalism and the radical negation of our values led our continent, and the world, into two dreadful wars which broke Europe and destroyed it. For 50 years, we have doggedly and successfully been creating the conditions for a new European renaissance. Europeans must now learn to reconcile their history and their geography. For 40 years the European Union had no need to determine its frontiers: they were imposed on it by the Warsaw Pact's tanks along the Iron Curtain.
By opening up to 13 candidate countries which will later be joined, I hope, by those of the western Balkans, the Union is affirming its mission to gather together the whole European family. This is highly ambitious. I would ask those who criticise Europe's leaders for sometimes lacking courage and ambition to reflect for a few minutes on the challenge constituted by the gradual, vital integration into the European Union of some 200 million men and women from around 20 countries.
Before it opens its doors, the European Union will have to reform its institutions. The work that we embarked upon in Helsinki is necessary, but we already know that it is just a stage. We will have to give much greater thought to the long-term consequences of these enlargements. This constitutes a major challenge. How can we nourish a community of peoples who are so different, not only in terms of their standards of living, but also in their experiences of European integration? How can we do this while at the same time pursuing the vital deepening of our common policies? Should we not contemplate implementing our advances more flexibly, as we have already done with Schengen and the euro?
The Europe which is both widening and deepening must gradually take on its full responsibilities on the world scene. Europeans want this, as the tragedy in Kosovo has shown. They want a strong Europe, a Europe which is capable of contributing fully to building a prosperous, peaceful world, and a Europe which claims its place as a major force in the world. The European Union is already the world's leading economic and trade power. It has equipped itself with the euro, the second major currency alongside the dollar. It signalled its cohesion, its determination and its ability to defend its interests and its model, and to do so with a single voice, at the WTO talks in Seattle. The European Union must now affirm that capacity in the sphere of foreign policy and defence.
With the extension of codecision there are now few areas in which you are not involved, and the citizens of Europe, who followed with interest the hearings of the candidates prior to the appointment of the new Commission, were able to see for themselves not only the importance of this House’s role, but also the impartiality and competence which each one of you brought to the process of appointing the European commissioners. I should like to pay tribute here to the volume and quality of the work which is accomplished here, in your committees, in your plenary sittings and in the Conciliation Committee involving the European Parliament and the Council, a veritable crucible in which European law is forged.
This everyday work of legislation and supervision has become an essential part of the life of our Union, but one which does not encroach on the prerogatives of the Council or the Commission, for we all wish to respect the institutional balance provided for by the Treaties. Your role will grow still further with the fresh reform of the European institutions which the Helsinki European Council has just launched – and I should like to pay tribute to the outgoing Presidency which has worked extremely hard to achieve the success of the Helsinki Summit.
Alongside the planned extension of qualified majority voting to cover new areas, it seems to me to be natural that your Parliament’s powers should be widened as a co-legislator in these fields. It is essential that you should make your point of view heard on this institutional reform. It is your wish, and the European Council has just adopted provisions to this effect at Helsinki. I shall ensure that they are implemented in a spirit of openness during the French Presidency of the Union, which I hope may make it possible to complete the work of the Intergovernmental Conference. I also welcome the fact, Madam President, that after the successful experiment we have seen in Helsinki, you will once again, at each European Council, be able to carry on a genuine dialogue with the Heads of State and Government rather than merely making a speech setting out Parliament’s views.
Your Assembly is an institution which is gaining in power within the Union, but too many Europeans are still ignorant of your role – as witness, alas, the low turnout at the European elections in nearly all the Member States. Let us therefore combine our efforts to ensure that the electoral system throughout Europe brings ordinary citizens closer to those who represent them in Strasbourg. Let us adopt a genuine statute for Members, respecting all this House’s prerogatives.
All this would help our fellow citizens identify more closely with their representatives. All this would encourage them to step up their dialogue with their European parliamentarians. You yourself, Madam President, set an example by taking every opportunity to speak in public, by tirelessly explaining your institution’s role and by showing Parliament to be a strong, determined and generous-minded body. Indeed, your enthusiasm is catching.
Ladies and gentlemen, these efforts must not be confined to raising the profile of your assembly. Everyone is aware of this. The aim must now be to win the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens by changing their very idea of Europe. Our peoples often see Europe as technocratic, distant or abstract. We are mindful of their complaints. Little publicity is given to the Treaties and European rules and regulations. The Union too often ignores citizens’ day-to-day concerns. It often imposes constraints on their lives. It does not take sufficient heed of the principle of subsidiarity, but at the same time fails to pay sufficient attention to the major scourges of our time, such as unemployment, exclusion, drugs and crime. Well, let us answer these criticisms together."@en1
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