Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-02-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20020702.2.2-038"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, honourable Members, I would first of all like to welcome, on behalf of the Parliamentary Group of the Party of European Socialists, the outgoing President of the Council and the evocative speech that he has made today.
I would like to say that it will be very difficult for the Danish Presidency to complete the pending issues from Seville in December.
Thirdly, I have to say, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that you, a pedigree politician, have conducted your task in a manner that has broken with the neutrality of the presidencies. You have quite openly said, regarding what is happening in my country, that the socialists are at fault. You have systematically blamed the governments from my political family for problems and scored points off them. That is not the tradition of European presidencies, and I think that we should return to a more neutral type of presidency.
Finally, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, there is the subject of democratic control and the reform of the Council. It is true that we have concluded the agreement on access to documents. You took the step of placing the negotiation on how to legislate better at a political level. When you say that you are going to open up the Council in its capacity of codecision with Parliament, you tell us to access it via the Internet. We invite you when we have a codecision process. The least that you can do is to officially invite us when you have a codecision process. We are not just members of the public who should find out through the press.
To conclude, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, allow me also to mention your proposal for a Presidency of the Council for five years. In January I said that you could be good hosts for the Convention, because you had not expressed your opinion. Now that you have openly expressed it, I have to say that, as a European democrat, I am against us recreating the Holy Roman Germanic Empire and I am in favour of maintaining the Community method.
Allow me to make an initial observation on the atmosphere of Seville which was not only in a holiday period, but in Easter week, in a city that is defined as being the capital of the three cultures. We are against a fortress Europe and, above all, a Europe that is impregnable to European citizens, and we therefore think that an explanation is needed here as to why European and Iberian citizens, specifically Portuguese citizens, in this case, and elected representatives, were prevented from exercising their right to go to Seville.
With regard to the six-month presidency, the President-in-Office of the Council beat me to my criticism. He himself, both here and in Oxford, has criticised six-month presidencies. I have to express my agreement with this because, obviously, the book of Genesis cannot be rewritten every six months. Every six months a new Europe begins and that cannot be. For example, regarding the Spanish Presidency, the Lisbon process, which was a balanced process, cannot be recreated with different objectives. It is important to have energy, and we are in favour of liberalising energy, not simply privatising it, but we need to look after public services and job creation.
For example, with regard to immigration and asylum: two years ago there was an overall discussion in Tampere. The Swedish Presidency raised the important issue for Europe of our demography. Now it seems that everything is focused around illegal immigration. Does what the previous European Councils have done not count? We do not have a memory of the past, and this is an important point, because it has to be said, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that you gave the Justice and Home Affairs Council some very strict tasks: we have been waiting in the European Parliament for a more proactive and less repressive European policy to be made on immigration, through the codecision procedure. There have been five directives that have been waiting for the Council to do its work. That is the first thing.
Secondly, I have to say that the Presidency, and it has not been the only one to do this, has systematically avoided thorny issues. It has adopted many chapters of enlargement, but it has to be said that the most important part is yet to be done. I would like to point out that the European Parliament, as in previous enlargements, has always said that enlargement requires a review of the financial perspectives, and you are doing this by the back door.
The Parliamentary Group of the European Socialist Party has adopted a document on the necessary reform of the agricultural policy and you are doing it in private, without a public debate, and even without listening to what the Commission is proposing, which may be very debatable, but you have a responsibility to do so.
Regarding enlargement, I understand that Mr Poettering, in the German pre-election climate, is attacking Chancellor Schröder as a candidate. What he does not seem to have heard is what Mr Stoiber says about enlargement, which is even stronger."@en1
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