Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-17-Speech-4-127"
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"en.20010517.5.4-127"2
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".
The debates arising from examination of the Schleicher report in this part-session reveal extremely disturbing anti-democratic trends within the Community institutions and particularly within this Parliament.
Democracy means, first and foremost, respect for the law. Everyone knows perfectly well, even those who claim the contrary, that this plan for financing European political parties has no legal base. Article 191, as Mr Berthu has shown, cannot be used as a base for implementing Article 308. Court of Justice case law on this point is as clear as day. There is no Community competence. The majority of this Parliament, however, like the Commission, pretends not to know that, because there is so very much at stake for the federalist parties and the federalist ideology. What all this is really about is, on the one hand, the cash flow of several large parties whose members’ subscriptions no longer suffice to maintain their bureaucracies, and which are tightly confined by strict national anti-corruption provisions, and, on the other, the creation of a new instrument of forced federalisation which will limit the peoples’ freedom of choice.
Next, democracy means transparency. There is a danger that the system of financing for supranational European parties proposed by the Commission and the Schleicher report will constitute an exceptional channel for corruption and in particular for money laundering, since companies can make unlimited donations and the conditions for accepting donations from individuals are extremely lax. European financing would therefore make it possible to by-pass and thwart national efforts to clean up the funding of political parties and apply strict conditions to make it transparent.
Democracy is also respect for minorities. It is extremely disturbing that the debate on the Schleicher report, after being declared inadmissible by Parliament, was forcibly restored to the agenda this morning by an arrogant majority with minimal concern for respecting the law, as shown by Mr Barón Crespo’s alarming description of the minority in this Parliament as a ‘commando’. The majority of a Parliament that prides itself on teaching the whole world to respect minority rights would do well to start by respecting the minority within it."@en1
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