Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-047"
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"en.20010117.2.3-047"2
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". – Mr President, this proposal is about money for an instant, non-military response by the Union to crises. It is first pillar – for those who understand Union jargon – and is driven by the Commission. It is not a military, rapid reaction force, which is, of course, second pillar, and driven by the Council of Ministers.
However, I have been invited, lobbied and asked how I am going to deploy the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy's soldiers, tanks and planes. I have been asked whether we are going to use naval bases in Cyprus and to address a conference of Canadian soldiers. I want to make it absolutely clear that this is nothing to do with the military rapid reaction force: this is a financial facility for the Commission to respond to crises very rapidly.
Although the Commission will deploy the money as fast as is necessary, Parliament retains control as one half of the budgetary authority. We shall vote the money and we shall look forward to the reports from the Commission on how it has spent the money. We expect the Commission to spend the money on responding to crises by buying medicines, hiring doctors or nurses, chartering aircraft to carry the medicines, nurses or policemen – whatever is required – to the crisis, wherever it is – not necessarily within Europe.
In the past the Union has been rightly criticised for being slow in responding to crises. We have failed to send an immediate response when it was most obviously required, and this proposal is part of Commissioner Patten's praiseworthy efforts to improve the Union's aid programme, which is in a bit of a mess, to say the least.
I hope very much that Parliament will support it, and I will come back to that. We would be very interested to know whether, when the Commissioner responds to this debate, he would be able to outline the types of situations that he envisages this may be used for – although, of course, we have some ideas ourselves.
I have been asked by a number of colleagues who have read the report why, if it is such a good idea, there are so many amendments in it. The original Commission proposal was dated April last year, but after that nothing happened. It was blocked, it appears, by the French Presidency, with no explanation of what was happening. So I tabled a question at Question Time asking for an explanation and miraculously – but maybe there was no connection – the French Presidency and the Commission got together to negotiate to remove the blockage. They came up with an alternative text but, I am sorry to say, the Council has never had the courtesy to inform Parliament of the new version of the text. So the many amendments in my report are an attempt to amend the original proposal and for us to comment on the new compromise text which we happened to obtain, even though it was never given to us officially.
Parliament has only one reading on this, which is another reflection which was not corrected at the Nice Summit of the democratic deficit. It should, of course, be codecision, but it is not. However, we were able to threaten to use our single reading to withhold it – like the famous isoglucose case some years ago – and if we withhold an opinion, nothing further can happen. So we have an effective veto.
But, happily, the committee in Parliament has looked at this proposal in great detail and is in favour of it. Hence the many amendments proposed by the committee.
Finally – I am not going to go into the details of the amendments – I am happy to say that the committee adopted the amendments almost unanimously, with the single exception of the British Conservatives. They will no doubt explain why that was so. That was the party which I felt obliged to abandon because it had become totally negative about Europe. I very much hope that when we vote on this proposal they will at last feel positive and give it their wholehearted support."@en1
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