Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20001024.2.2-023"2
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"Madam President, President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I do not share Commissioner Barnier’s optimism about maintaining the Community system at Nice. It seems to me that we are moving in the opposite direction. We had a second pillar, then we had a third pillar, and now we are in the process of constructing a fourth pillar on defence, while a
fifth pillar also exists on economic and monetary union.
On the other hand, the major points of balance between European institutions are slowly being broken down. We have a Commission that is weakened and, rather than dealing with such fundamental issues, Parliament is waxing lyrical on somewhat surreal themes, such as a charter that has absolutely no legal basis and which no authority will be entrusted with enforcing, when all of our fifteen Member States have their own charters of fundamental rights.
While this Parliament holds forth on constitutionalisation, the real issue is – and I would stress this – that of the balance of power within the Commission. I cannot agree with you, Mr Poettering. The issue is one of not turning the Commission into a second Council by ensuring that each Member State is represented. The issue is that of turning the Commission into a genuine supranational body, an authority for the European Union.
These changes can of course only work to the disadvantage of the smaller States, as might be suspected judging from the manoeuvring of some larger States, who are banking on scenarios for the reweighting of votes and the composition of the Commission and speculating on the future composition of the Commission in order to earn themselves a little extra room for manoeuvre with regard to reweighting. The real issue is that of giving the Commission, by means of elections, a genuine legitimacy that relates directly to the citizens. The only way to make Commission stronger is to have the President of the Commission elected by direct universal suffrage and also – why not? – the Vice-President with responsibility for external relations, in order to at last remove this area from the second pillar. This is the only way to restore a true balance between the various institutions of the European Union.
But we refuse to talk about such things. We bring the question of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into our nation-oriented arguments, but fail to consider the fact that the future of Europe hinges on a Commission that is able to represent all its citizens and not the Member States as in the past, and one that has not been transformed – along the lines sketched out today – into a second Council, where all sorts of haggling become possible and no authentic expression of common European is able to emerge.
We must therefore urge everyone to return to the roots of our Union, to have the courage that Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt showed when deciding on the election of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage in 1976 and in 1979, and to decide that in 2009 we will finally have a President of the Commission who is also the President of the European Union."@en1
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