Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20010704.1.3-044"2
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"Mr President, first of all welcome to our Belgian neighbours here in Strasbourg and best wishes for a successful Presidency of the EU. I must say that what I heard sounded good. It was as if I were hearing our good friends Leo Tindemans, Wilfried Martens and Jean-Luc Dehaene, , but that places you in a very positive pro-European tradition.
For the rest, I wish you every success with your policy. It is a good start. Make sure that you are able to bring things to a successful conclusion.
The Benelux countries are among the founders of the European Community and that already implies a good deal of idealism and vision. That is also necessary alongside the realism that we also always require. I should like to make two comments in this debate.
I should like to say something about the after-effects of the Nice Treaty. I should like to say something about asylum, migration and human rights policy. And then I shall address Mr Michel.
Where the Treaty of Nice is concerned, what has gradually emerged is that Nice produced a botched job and that it is necessary to do that work again. The Belgian Presidency has resolved to set this process in motion at the Laeken Summit. It is important to us that there should be no false start as regards both the agenda and the method.
I believe that it is really necessary to reform the complicated voting procedure and the many methods of decision-making in the Council. I also believe, and I agree completely with what Mr Verhofstadt said, that the European Parliament needs to be given co-decision powers in all legislative areas. On that point, a deplorable chain of events was, in fact, broken at Nice.
Where the method is concerned, we opt, as you know, not for the concept of a forum but for that of a convention. I have a critical comment on this. I cannot understand why that convention should draw up three scenarios in advance. Because I gather that that is the intention. Surely the convention can do that when it meets. The convention for the Charter worked well. When you talk of three scenarios, I have the feeling that a divide and rule policy is being deployed whereby the Council can always choose one of the three.
Finally, a comment about the asylum and migration policy. What I did not find in Mr Verhofstadt’s list in that area is the ‘safe countries’ policy. A great evil besetting the European Union is that we all have different ideas on the subject. I should like to ask if that could be added to the list of five. We shall be having a large-scale debate on the subject in Parliament in September. At that time we shall probably be able to go into greater detail."@en1
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