Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-11-Speech-2-135"
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"en.20020611.8.2-135"2
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"Madam President, this is a truly historic event: the first modification of the 1976 Act.
President Gil Robles, whom I would like to congratulate as rapporteur for this parliamentary assent, has said that many drafts have become deadlocked. I remember how a distinguished British Conservative, Edmund Burk, said that Spain was like a whale washed up on the shores of Europe (or something like that, I am quoting from memory). Therefore, I am very pleased that it is the Spanish Presidency that has managed to break the deadlock on this issue and that in 2002, under the Spanish Presidency, we will have the first reform of the Electoral Act.
I believe this is one of the few cases in which the European Parliament is called upon to issue an assent, that is to say, to vote yes or no, and, furthermore, so that this assent may have legal results, there must be an absolute majority in the House.
This was the conflict the European Parliament was faced with: what to do. As the rapporteur said, it is true that not all of the aspirations of the European Parliament contained in its previous report, drawn up by our friend and former colleague, Mr Georgios Anastasopoulos, have been taken into account.
It is also true that it was necessary to adapt this Electoral Act to the various and successive modifications of the Treaties. And it is also the case that we had to comply with a mandate and resolve an issue which stemmed from a judgment of a Court – in this case the Strasbourg Court – and therefore adapt our electoral system to the judgment in the Matthews case. That is what is being done.
Like the rapporteur, I believe that most of the considerations expressed by the European Parliament on these issues, in its previous report, since the Treaty of Amsterdam modified the uniform electoral system in accordance with the general principles of electoral law, appear in the spirit and the letter of the text before us today.
The Group of the European Peoples’ Party is therefore going to vote in favour, and it is true that there will be time to accommodate other requests from the European Parliament in the future.
The historic nature of this moment, however, does not end there, because the Group of the European Peoples’ Party is going to support an amendment presented by Mr Bonde – a very unusual thing in this Parliament – because we think it is a good amendment, an amendment in which Mr Bonde says and maintains that those Members of Parliament elected in the territory of a State represent the whole of the electorate, something which, by the way – and this brings me back to what I said at the beginning – was also advocated by Edmund Burk in his comments to the voters of Bristol in 1794.
Madam President, I would therefore like to say that my group will vote in favour of this assent which Mr Gil Robles has drawn up with such skill and dexterity."@en1
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