Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-24-Speech-3-114"
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"en.20011024.5.3-114"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank Mr Poos and point out that all the institutions of the European Union will have to re-orientate themselves and find better ways of working in view of the challenges being presented to them, the enlargement of the European Union and the changes which will come about simply because of the number of people involved.
The Commission has for some time been pressing on with this sort of internal reform process. The European Parliament is occupied in creating the same sort of conditions by means of the Corbett report, which is currently in progress, provided we can achieve these without amendments to the Treaties becoming necessary. I believe this should be done by both these institutions and also by the Council, which will have the greatest problems simply by reason of the increase in the number of its members. For when I consider that in future, when there are 27 members at a meeting of the European Council, it will take an hour and a half simply to deal with the precedence of delegations and then that the statements made by every delegation will make even lunch difficult – and of course we cannot go without lunch – then it clearly does not go without saying that we will be able to work effectively.
This has nothing to do with the effectiveness of a Council Presidency, but exclusively with the structures. That is why it is extraordinarily important that we really do tackle many of Mr Poos' proposals in this area, which can be realised by simple amendments to the Rules of Procedure and without Treaty amendments. I believe we have to do this for two reasons, namely to increase efficiency and for the sake of greater transparency.
Efficiency can only be increased by the burden of the General Council no longer having to be borne by one pair of hands and in the context of one organisation. Meeting up constitutes Item A, we do a bit of foreign policy, then all 27 of us meet the President of Kazakhstan, then move on to Item B, which is legislation, and all this with seamless transitions from one item to the next, so that half the participants are always in a press conference.
Madam President-in-Office of the Council, I may be exaggerating a bit, but I fear that the reality is rather like that in some areas. It would in fact be necessary, for this reason, to move over to an Executive Council concentrating on foreign policy in particular. We really should be in a position to formulate a coherent foreign policy in the Council, provided that it is an intergovernmental organisation, and must make it clear that one effect of transparency will be a Legislative Council whose votes will be publicly taken and publicly explained.
We will only win people’s acceptance of Europe if they know who took what decision and for what reason. That is a fundamental issue when it comes to gaining our citizens' acceptance, and only in this way can we, by means of the codecision procedure, bring about the public interaction of Parliament and the Council, so that the citizen and the media have the chance to reach a fair judgment and hold to account those who are responsible, or believed to be responsible, for wrong decisions.
I believe it to be urgently necessary that the work should be made parliamentary in this way and that this should be the means by which it is also made political. We are engaged in the work of legislation, which in many fields is regulated by officials who share in the decisions. I find it hard to reconcile this with our democratic conceptions and so I would like to ask you to take the initiative on this point in Laeken, because we can achieve a great deal without amending the Treaty and should also be preparing ourselves in this way for enlargement of the European Union."@en1
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