Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-13-Speech-1-025"
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"en.20000313.2.1-025"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, I would first of all like to thank Prime Minister Guterres, the President-in-Office, who has taken two initiatives. One is the Special European Summit in Lisbon on employment, social cohesion and competition and the second – and this is important to the European Parliament – is his prior consultation of this House. The Socialist Group responded to this consultation but, furthermore, I would like to highlight the fact that he has had the political courage and grace to appear before Parliament. In this respect, he has taken a political risk and we should recognise this and also support him in this initiative, which I hope, Madam President, in the best tradition of this House, will create a precedent.
With regard to the content of his speech, I must say that my Group identifies very closely with his confirmation of the fundamental values of the European Union. Without risk of being partisan, I believe that the President-in-Office of the Council has presented a Social Democratic initiative consisting of modernising, rather than dismantling, the European economy, and that is what we are arguing for.
There has been mention of a magic triangle which consists of three pillars, three challenges, aimed at dealing with three types of deficit. I am going mention them very briefly. I will refer firstly to the political deficit. Mr President-in-Office, all democratic systems have deficits, but you are right to point out that we are currently at the beginning, under the Portuguese Presidency, of an Intergovernmental Conference aimed at reforming the Treaties. I am aware, as you have said, that the Portuguese Government wishes to go much further than the so-called Amsterdam “leftovers”, which are not leftovers, but important issues. I would encourage him to include issues such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as matters relating to the functioning of our institutions, in this reform. I believe this is important. It is no less important to create, together with the monetary government which we already have, an economic government, that is to say, a strengthening of the Union’s capacity for economic decision making.
The second point is the strategic challenge. I am in absolute agreement with him when he stresses the importance of the knowledge-based society and lifelong training. I would ask the Council, on studying the budgets, to provide more funding for issues relating to knowledge. I would ask that we are not forced once again to fight for the Socrates or Leonardo programmes, in terms of research and the framework plan, and that the Council be more generous. I believe that this is important.
Thirdly, with regard to coordination, it seems to me to be very positive that you have opted, once and for all, to take advantage of existing initiatives, rather than launch new initiatives which have no future. I would also encourage the European Council to get to grips with ECOFIN, so that we do not have a situation where the European Council approves a resolution and then ECOFIN does not finance it."@en1
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