Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-01-18-Speech-2-006"
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"en.20000118.1.2-006"2
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"Mr President, I respond to an invitation yesterday afternoon by the President of the House to speak on behalf of my group on a matter referred to in the Minutes. I refer to item 11 on the order of business.
Firstly, I believe the issue raised by the President of the Socialist Group yesterday about the reinstatement of the debate with the President of the Commission on the five-year strategic programme was sufficiently important for other speakers who wished to comment briefly on that matter to have been accommodated. I wish to express that view even if I respectfully disagreed and voted against the proposal of the President of the Socialist Group.
The second point I would like to make – and which I would have wished to make yesterday before the vote – is that this Parliament, as other speakers remarked yesterday, can only really have an effect if it works in close cooperation and synergy with the European Commission. We should also have the humility to recognise that, if we wanted to have a strategic debate accompanied not just by a presentation and elucidation by the President of the Commission, but also by a five-year programme, we should have the mechanisms in place more than just a week in advance of the debate in this House, so as to be able to discuss and convey in due time to the Commission what our wishes were.
There is one basic lesson I would like us to learn from this. When there are major set-piece debates scheduled between this House and the European Commission in the future, we should clear all of our lines on what are our mutual expectations at least one full working month in advance. There needs firstly to be clarity between all of the groups of this House and then between this House and the Commission. We should not find ourselves late in the day in the unfortunate position where the one or other institution creates an unnecessary fracture in institutional relationships.
Looking at some of the press reports of last Friday, I believe that the Commission and its President exercised commendable self-restraint in the way they commented publicly. That is something for which I have a deep appreciation. I hope that we will learn the lessons and not repeat this unnecessary exercise which I believe was founded on a misapprehension as to what was expected rather than any bad faith on the part of either of the two institutions. It should not be dramatised into something more than that."@en1
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