Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-14-Speech-2-168"
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"en.20030114.5.2-168"2
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"Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Greece has changed a great deal since its last presidency, as it has become a staunch supporter of Turkey’s candidacy. To a certain extent we can understand the position of the Greek Government, since it aims to solve its problem from the top, by transferring it to the European Union. At Union level, however, as I have already said several times to my fellow Members here in Parliament, we should not accept what strongly resembles a decision to forge ahead without having considered it further.
Greece’s position with regard to the institutions surprised us a little. The Prime Minister, Costas Simitis, who is here today, said recently, speaking in a French daily newspaper, that ‘Greece believes we need a strong Commission rather than two decision-making bodies, the Commission and the Council, otherwise the European Union could risk turning into an intergovernmental Union and not the federal model we are hoping for’. On studying this statement carefully, we learn that, according to the Greek Government, the Commission should possess greater decision-making power than even the Council. That is indeed far removed from an intergovernmental Union, but it is also far removed from the traditional Community model. I hope that the Prime Minister will contradict me later on.
With regard to the priorities of the Greek Presidency, we welcome the emphasis placed on the issues of immigration, asylum and external border management, which today have in fact become extremely serious. We would therefore ask the Presidency to show greater firmness in these matters, and in particular in the fight against illegal immigration.
Lastly, we are surprised at the absence, in these priorities, of a specific chapter on economic and monetary union, because, on this point, Greece could have presented not only priorities for the future, but also a summary of the past. This summary would have been fully justified, since Greece has presided over the Eurogroup for the past six months. We cannot, however, see anything: there is no such summary! With regard to the past, how has the euro favoured growth, or, on the contrary, has it had an adverse effect? With regard to the future, how, for example, does the Greek Presidency intend to contribute to making the Stability Pact more intelligent? We would have benefited from some clarification on all of these points."@en1
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