Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-17-Speech-4-060"
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"en.20010517.3.4-060"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the European statute on political parties, which we are debating today, is long overdue. I should therefore like to thank the Commission for helping us, together with the European parties and the groups, to close this gap in European-level legislation in this parliamentary session.
The provisions being introduced here have been national law and have applied to the national parties in all the Member States for a long time, despite varying rules. To all those who are now talking about parties I do have to say that each of us is sitting here because he was the candidate of a political party at national level. We are after all living in a multi-party democracy. Parties are not an end in themselves. They are an essential part of a functioning democracy and constitute a link between citizens, the groups and the public in the opinion-forming and decision-making process.
In approving the Regulation that we are discussing today, we are making a contribution towards strengthening European democracy, intensifying the opinion-forming process and the debate within Europe and making the national parties more European. The Regulation helps to increase transparency in respect of the funding of political work, create greater clarity, and separate group and party work, something which the European People's Party – my friend Alejandro Agag has spoken about this – has been working hard to achieve for some time already, harder than the other parties. In addition it contributes to guaranteeing the right of the European Court of Auditors to monitor the affairs of the European parties.
This Regulation is, however, also a basic prerequisite for a debate which we need to have on common electoral law and on common rules governing incompatibility for Members of Parliament in the different countries, and a prerequisite for the debate on the possibility of European parties standing in European parliamentary elections. It contributes to making the post-Nice process more democratic. We, the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, want more transparency and we want to strengthen the people's Europe, instead of having more closed doors – read the Council – and secretariats. We are in favour of the right to have recourse to legal action, enshrining the Charter of Fundamental Rights as a qualitative pre-condition for parties, European parties having legal personality and putting an end to cross-financing."@en1
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