Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-17-Speech-1-093"
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"en.20011217.3.1-093"2
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"Mr President, time is short, so my only comment will be on the really historic decision to convene a constituent assembly which has already – albeit inaccurately – been called a Convention.
Τhe European Parliament has every right to be proud because the idea of a Convention was mooted here, in this House, and took shape in the reports by the European Parliament, mainly from 1997 onwards. Parliament has insisted ever since that institutional development is a waste of time unless someone else is given the job of drafting new Treaties, i.e. unless a political body takes over the role played hitherto by the bureaucrats. This is not the time to judge whether or not we have finally achieved our aim; that will depend on the degree to which the proposals tabled by the Convention find their way into the new Treaties, which is why the Convention needs to table specific institutional proposals, assuming of course that it reaches an agreement. If the Convention tables a selection of alternatives to the Intergovernmental Conference, rather than specific proposals, then it will have little effect on the shape of the new Treaty.
Unfortunately, the instructions to come out of Laeken are rather more open-ended on this point than they should have been. If you stop to consider that no institutional body in the European Union and no institution in any one Member State has studied or tabled more thoughts on the institutional aspects of the European Union than the European Parliament, then a contingent of 16 delegates is hardly in proportion to its contribution to date.
However, just so that our fellow citizens know where they stand, the Convention will not table a draft Treaty, it will table a draft Constitutional Treaty. The intergovernmental method will be complemented by the Community method, rather than being abolished, which is perfectly reasonable, given that the European Union is a union of nations and a union of states. However, the Convention takes the fight for greater democracy and greater rule of law in the European Union to a new level. It really is a pity, Mr President, that the chairman of the Convention is appointed by the Council. It would have been more fitting to allow a body made up mainly of members of parliament to elect its own chairman."@en1
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