Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-13-Speech-4-125"
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"en.20000413.3.4-125"2
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"Enlargement of the European Union is one of the most important issues for the future of Europe. The aim of the present Intergovernmental Conference is to prepare the EU for this enlargement. If enlargement is to be implemented successfully, certain institutional changes are required. The EU must become more efficient and more democratic, and a balance should be maintained between the small and large countries. Moreover, it is important that the Intergovernmental Conference should be concluded before the end of the year so that the process of enlargement which has been embarked upon is not delayed.
We are not prepared to dispense with the veto in regard to military cooperation.
The report on the Intergovernmental Conference is the European Parliament’s contribution to that conference. It discusses both the necessary institutional reforms, about which no conclusions were reached in the Treaty of Amsterdam, and a number of additional questions which must also be dealt with prior to enlargement. We, the Swedish Members, Mr Pierre Schori, Mr Jan Andersson, Mr Göran Färm and Mrs Ewa Hedkvist Petersen, support the main features of the report, but we would highlight the following points on which, to some extent, we have different opinions, which is why we abstained from voting in the final ballot.
is to represent the people in the Union. Enlargement means more States’ representatives in Parliament. If an efficient decision-making procedure is to be maintained, there must be a change in the way the seats are distributed. We advocate a ceiling of 700 Members of the European Parliament. The number of seats allocated to each country is determined through a system of degressive proportionality on the basis of the country’s population. Should a system with a single European constituency be introduced, the number of Members should not be increased.
A new weighting of votes in the
is a prerequisite for successful enlargement of the EU. It is important that the solution should be a permanent one and not need to be changed in connection with any future enlargement. It ought to strike a balance between the principles of, on the one hand, ‘one country, one vote’ and, on the other hand, ‘one citizen, one vote’. An alternative would be for the weighting of votes in the Council to be calculated on the basis of the root of the population in the individual countries.
We believe that each Member State should have a Member in the
. The Members of the Commission work for the whole Union and are important if a consensus between the Member States is to be achieved. The Commission should therefore be able to draw upon knowledge and experience from all the countries in the Union. In that way, the legitimacy of the Commission would also be strengthened.
The task of protecting the Union’s interests against fraud is to be carried out by the individual Member States’ institutions and not by a
. It is nonetheless important and desirable that there should be European prosecutors in each Member State and that they should cooperate.
in the Council must be required in questions of a constitutional and fundamental nature, as well as in questions affecting general security and defence policy.
between at least a third of the Member States cannot apply in the case of defence cooperation.
EU cooperation is, in the first place, a
and ought to be distinguished from military cooperation. The Member States have different backgrounds where military alliances and neutrality are concerned. We made great progress in Cologne and Helsinki by preparing ourselves for preventive crisis and conflict management. It is therefore important that the Treaty should reflect the difference between civilian and military cooperation. Military aid of a kind which places countries under obligations to each other has no place in the EU’s Treaty."@en1
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"Closer cooperation"1
"The role of the European Parliament"1
"Unanimity"1
"civilian European project"1
"supranational authority"1
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