Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-036"
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"en.20001024.2.2-036"2
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"Mr President, with just seven weeks to go to the Nice summit, the time has come for clarity and open debate.
How do things stand at present? We still have no agreement on the modus operandi for the European Commission, on how votes are to be weighted in the Council, on what should be done about the principle of qualified majority voting or on proportional representation in the European Parliament. In other words, today – I repeat, today – there is a risk of the so-called Amsterdam left-overs becoming Nice left-overs unless we take some decisive action right away. And that is not all. The future of the Charter of Human Rights appears to be in the balance, even as an insert under Article 6, as suggested by the European Parliament at today’s sitting, as does the institutional fate of support for European political parties.
Clearly the constitutionalisation of the Treaties will have to be postponed to a later date. There are, of course, some issues on which progress of a sort is being made. The first is reinforced cooperation, where significant progress has been made. Of course it is, on occasions, clear from the debate that this institution is viewed in some quarters not as the answer to the flexibility which Europe needs but as a sort of future defence to safeguard their interests vis-à-vis future members of the European Union. Progress has also been made with Article 7 on combating violations of the basic values of the European Union.
So what are the deeper historical implications of these developments? My purpose in listing them is not to disappoint, but because we still have time to act before Nice. The leaders of Europe have not formulated a clear vision. They have not clearly formulated their final philosophy. Sometimes the intergovernmental conference looks like an anxious administrative bureaucracy trying to share out power. This does not convince the man in the street. We are not managing a bank or a shop. We are leading people and that calls for a slightly different approach. Enlargement has turned from a dream into a nightmare for some people, who fear that it might upset the balance of power. But we are unlikely to achieve the desired result with a purely bureaucratic approach. I am also worried by the minimum response to Parliament’s call for democratisation.
I am worried that the changeover to qualified majority voting is not directly linked to codecision with the European Parliament. But we still have time, miracles do happen in politics and I personally am keen to see a few happen in Nice."@en1
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