Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-24-Speech-3-101"
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"en.20011024.5.3-101"2
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".
Mr President, it is a true honour for me to be able to present to you this report on Council reform in the presence of Mrs Neyts-Uyttebroeck, representing the Council and Mr Barnier, representing the Commission.
This own-initiative report does not concern the Council alone. It also concerns the European Parliament and Commission in equal measure, as they have the same interest in ensuring that the three institutions work well, and are efficient and coherent. In an enlarged Union, it is imperative that the Community institutions improve their ability to make decisions and increase their reaction time. I do not believe that it constitutes any insider dealing to state that today the Council is the most badly organised institution. This is a serious problem, since this institution, which has both executive and legislative competences, is still, in spite of the changes made to the Treaty, the European Union’s main centre of power. The Council has already lost much of its effectiveness. In my report, you will find a long list of dysfunctions. The Council itself had carried out some preparatory work three or four years ago and I used this and other work as a basis. Since then, however, nothing has been done, although some other preparatory work was carried out by former – and very key – figures on the international stage, and I shall mention, in particular, the
working group led by Jacques Delors. One of the dysfunctions that I must emphasise particularly is institutional digression, which has primarily been at the expense of Community procedures, along with the Commission. The rise in power of the European Council, combined with the weakness of the General Affairs Council, has re-established the intergovernmental method of preparing decisions. The aides, or ‘sherpas’, used by the Heads of State, have reintroduced a method that is reminiscent of nineteenth century secret diplomacy. Mini-summit meetings, like the one held at Ghent, have brought back the tendency to place control in the hands of a chosen few, a dream that some have never given up on since the Fouchet plan of the 1960s. In order to correct this digression, I recommend nothing more and nothing less than going back to the Treaty. We should ask the European Council to stop tackling detailed issues and to stop acting like an enormous vacuum cleaner that tries to deal with all the important decisions. You should not bite off more than you can chew. What is even worse is that the European Council now causes the institutional system to come to a standstill. No one dares to make a decision anymore. Everything is now referred back to those at the top. The European Council should restrict itself to giving general guidelines on European policy, as laid down in the Treaty. We must re-evaluate the General Affairs Council, enabling it to resolve conflicts between the specialised Councils and ensuring that decisions are coherent. To this end, it is essential to have a single channel for preparations, and the same single channel for preparations could also be used by the European Council. We must demand that the ministers in the General Affairs Council do not deal with European affairs at a brief monthly meeting, where an in-depth discussion of the items on the agenda is not possible due to the limited number of ministers attending and the unacceptable practical conditions. The proposal for a resolution suggests a number of practical solutions, which can all be implemented immediately without having to amend the Treaty.
Before I finish, I would like to draw the attention of Members to the proposals on improving collaboration with the European Parliament. They concern the presence of Council ministers at our important debates as well as speeding up the legislative procedure from the first-reading stage. With regard to transparency, I hope that the European Parliament and the Council will support the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, which proposes that Council discussions be made public when it is working on legislation. This obviously requires considerable reorganisation of the agenda and discipline in the conduct of meetings. If the Council did not meet behind closed doors when carrying out its duties as co-legislator, citizens might also perceive it as a second legislative chamber, which is, in fact, a task that the Council already fulfils today."@en1
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