Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-06-Speech-3-164"
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"en.20020206.8.3-164"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to add to the list of congratulations issued to the chairman of the committee, who is therefore also the rapporteur for this report. A good report has been drawn up, providing a sound basis partly for continued dialogue with the national parliaments but also for an influential role for the committee in cooperating with the Convention. That is because there will be a real need for everyone of first-rate ability, whether they be in the European Parliament’s delegation to the Convention or on the committee. I therefore very much hope that this can continue. These are, of course, years in which we are, in actual fact, involved in an incredibly exciting project aimed at developing an international democracy that is also supported by the people for, despite our having been cooperating for 50 years, we have of course to acknowledge, firstly, that we are only at the development phase and, secondly, that we still do not have full support and understanding for the project. This is, of course, something that we have experienced many times in Denmark, where it has been difficult to obtain people’s acceptance of new treaties, and it has now also been experienced in Ireland. I believe that the referendums are merely symptomatic of what is happening in Europe as a whole, and that is what we must take seriously.
We should not perhaps attach too much importance to what has happened in those two countries. It is up to the national authorities to be serious in their response, but I believe we must acknowledge that what is at issue here is more than just isolated Danish/Irish scepticism. There is nothing strange about the fact that acceptance is difficult to obtain, for we have been accustomed to using the national parliaments as the basis for our democracy, and now we suddenly have to demonstrate that there is nothing to stop our having both the national democracies and an international democracy and, above all, that they can operate in tandem. That is what the challenge is and, in a certain sense, I think we can tell ourselves that we have perhaps been ahead of our time. If we did not have the EU that we know today, we should have had to prepare something as a response to the global challenge. In reality, it might have been simpler if we had started from scratch, but I now think we must proceed on the basis we already have."@en1
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