Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-04-Speech-2-284"
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"en.20010904.11.2-284"2
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"Mr President, like motherhood and apple pie, no-one could possibly be against safety, especially when it involves aeroplanes. But make no mistake: the real agenda of this proposal is further political integration. For, as the Commission so eloquently puts it in its own document, it intends to create the European Aviation Safety Agency through the gradual integration of national systems. That seems to me to be a driving force for the whole of the European Union – the gradual integration of national systems.
I wish that phrase could be plastered in massive letters on billboards around the United Kingdom so that my fellow subjects could really understand what is really going on. As Mr Duisenberg put it recently when he described the euro as a symbol of political integration, we have here yet another symbol – the European Aviation Safety Agency.
But what is particularly striking here, apart from the fact that we already have an independent intergovernmental agency in the Joint Aviation Authority, is the stark admission that continued intergovernmental cooperation is to be abandoned as it is developed and I quote from the rapporteur's report: "would have involved lengthy ratification procedures in the national parliaments of the states concerned . . ., which would not necessarily have been successful". How awkward and inconvenient democracy is. Rather like the Irish population when they run a referendum, you can never rely on it to behave. Much easier, therefore, to create another European institution and get rid of the whole messy business. Administratively convenient it may be, democracy it is not. But it is symbolic of the European Union's experience.
Given the aviation content here, and with due deference to the rapporteur, I can only conclude with a phrase that really will not translate from the English: "What a Messerschmidt"."@en1
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