Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-016"
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"en.20020206.2.3-016"2
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"Mr President, you have called for a more democratic and less bureaucratic Parliament. I see this as an important concept, and so I would like to start with the situation of the Unattached Members, the 33 truly second-class Members who do not have access to the d’Hondt system which is used to distribute everything in this House, who are not entitled to table documents or amendments and who are forced to admit even to their electorate that they are unable to play a full part in the Parliament’s work.
There is a report which has been at a standstill for two years in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs; moreover a judgement was returned a few months ago by the Court of Justice which raised a number of important points in terms of whether those measures were appropriate or did not need to be amended, or whether legal penalties should not be imposed for failure to apply them. Mr President, I call upon you to pursue this matter and to revitalise that aspect of the work of this House, for I feel that, precisely with regard to the goal you mentioned, one of the problems facing us is not just the general, essential need to make our working methods more democratic and to ensure greater participation by all the Members, but also to take into consideration the second-class status of the Unattached Members which is endorsed and still confirmed in this House.
From this point of view, Mr President, as has already been said, the Corbett report not only fails to provide an adequate response but is also, in a number of respects, a caricature of what should be an endeavour to improve our conditions. How could one possibly envisage – the Members may not be aware of this, but Mr Corbett did make this suggestion – doing away with topical and urgent debates, which are one of Parliament’s opportunities for real political debate, as President Cox said? At this point, we might just as well do away with the resolutions at the end of political debates as well and, that way, we will become even more of a machine for voting on reports. I feel that this is not the right direction to take and, in this connection, I genuinely hope that the political groups, the Members and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs itself will carefully reconsider this suggestion, which is not a good one. Mr President, we need a Parliament whose work is better structured. When we have major debates, attended by members of the Commission or the Council but where only 10 or 15 Members of this House are present, it does not reflect well on Parliament. Parliament is not doing itself any service. Then, two hours later, maybe, this House becomes a sort of voting chamber, not least because, as we know, the existence of a certain penalty system makes it convenient to come here and vote. We used to have explanations of vote and a system which made debates visible and comprehensible for journalists and the public. That is no longer the case.
The other point concerns publishing our debates. Mr Collins has raised this point and the other Unattached Members agree with him. Even today, for example, this meeting could have been organised in such a way that everyone participated or it could even have been transmitted over the internal system. I feel, and it is our deep conviction, Mr President, that, just as your election was broadcast over the Internet – and this was a major step forward – in this age of the Internet, both committee and plenary debates can and should be broadcast to give all the citizens, not just the European citizens, access to our work.
Lastly, a word on the subject of the statute, Mr President. The statute is important, but it must also include Members’ prerogatives; in other words, it must not be a statute centred solely on the financial side of being a Member of Parliament. I feel that the challenge facing us is to produce a Statute that definitively defines and establishes MEPs’ status, their responsibilities, their prerogatives and their rights in respect of the institutions preparing for enlargement. I wish you every success in your work in this area, Mr President, and I hope that major reforms will be achieved under your presidency before 2004."@en1
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