Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20010704.1.3-017"2
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"Europe not only has a present, it mainly, of course has a future. Offering practical solutions to practical problems is one thing, but giving citizens a view of the future of the European Union is just as important. That is why, in Nice, we were charged with drawing up a Laeken Declaration by the end of the year which can map out the way ahead.
Would it not be better to generalise the co-decision rights of the European Parliament?
However, the Laeken Declaration must be more than a simple procedure. It must not restrict itself to what I venture to call a dry summary of agenda points or to simply establishing a method of working. I believe that our ambition should extend further. In Laeken, we must provide the impetus for the great reform that is fast approaching and sketch the outlines of the new European Union after enlargement. An enlargement which, if I may say so, is, in fact, not so much an enlargement as a genuine change and transformation. Of course, we must not try to anticipate the answers, but it will be necessary to ask the right questions and identify those issues which will determine the future of Europe. In doing so, absolutely no issue or topic must be taboo.
In the Laeken Declaration, I should like to broach the following crucial questions. My starting point is that the European Union has a huge problem. It has lost touch with the individual citizen, and at least a section of public opinion is convinced that the Union intervenes all too often, and sometimes too drastically, in people’s daily lives. People find the Union non-transparent, unduly bureaucratic and insufficiently democratic. Quite rightly so, too. All this must be discussed in the first chapter of the Declaration, for how can you in fact solve problems if you do not dare first to acknowledge them in the Declaration? From this, the question naturally arises as to what the European Union’s values and objectives should be. What precisely does European identity consist of? What does it mean to people? This, brings us, of course, to the subject of a constitution for the Union, accompanied by a simplification and revision of the Treaties.
This leads us on to a third, and perhaps the most crucial issue, namely that of the ordering of the Union’s powers, in other words the division of responsibilities within the Union. We need clear agreements. Who does what at what level? For their part, people now already know perfectly well what essential tasks they expect the European Union to fulfil. The recent soundings in Europe constantly indicate the same core tasks for the Union: the socio-economic policy designed to support the Monetary Union, basic standards on social security, a common asylum and migration policy, a joint foreign policy and a collective approach to defence. At the same time, citizens feel that the Union is too concerned with the over-detailed implementation of policy that could be better implemented at national or regional level. In short, people feel that the Union should concentrate first and foremost on creating the regulatory framework, on the boundary conditions, on monitoring and on the implementation of policy by regions or Member States. Consequently, we must not in any way shirk this discussion, which must focus on a division of powers in both directions. Which additional tasks will be assigned to the Union, and which to the Member States?
The Laeken Declaration must also initiate reconsideration of another problem, namely the unchecked growth, the proliferation and, I am tempted to say, the inflation of policy instruments. In a speech I gave recently in Göttweig in Austria, I listed what amount to no less than thirty different policy instruments in the Treaties. A radical simplification of those instruments is urgently necessary.
Nor must the method of financing the European Union be omitted from the Laeken Declaration. At the moment, the Union does not have full budgetary powers of its own. It has no real resources of its own, since it is largely financed on the basis of GNP contributions. We must at least be bold enough to ask the question of whether this indirect method of financing is the correct one and of whether direct financing would not be more legitimate and more democratic.
In the Laeken Declaration, we shall not of course be able to avoid a discussion of the institutions. Do we or do we not want a directly elected President of the Commission?"@en1
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