Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-041"
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"en.20031022.2.3-041"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I want, in this speech, to focus in the main on the work of the Intergovernmental Conference, which forms, indeed, the centrepiece of the Italian Presidency of the Council, and which we want to encourage the Italian Presidency to complete before the end of this year, that being the only way of ensuring that Europe will continue, post-enlargement, to be capable of taking action, transparent and acceptable to its citizens. This is a big task for the Heads of State or Government to take upon themselves in Europe’s interests.
So I also want to ask you – and here I am appealing to the Council and to the Heads of State or Government as a whole – to be really aware of the European point of view and of their responsibility to Europe in the negotiations, and not to get tangled up in trivial national issues. We saw at the last Intergovernmental Conference, in Nice, where that can lead, and that is not the European spirit that we desperately need. People have high expectations, and the Council bears great responsibilities.
In its fashion, the Convention produced an astonishing good result. I would like to state that it makes an outstanding basis for the deliberations that are now to take place at the Intergovernmental Conference. I would like to point out, though, that a few critical comments do of course have to be made alongside all the positive aspects.
Firstly, I think it right and proper that we should find a place in the preamble of this Treaty for the Christian heritage that has shaped this continent like nothing else, the clasp that holds it together. Let Mr Cohn-Bendit make as much noise as he likes about that, but his roots, too, are in this continent’s Christian heritage.
Your reacting in the way that you do proves me right.
Secondly, we will have to give some thought to whether the Convention, in part 3, has overshot the mark here in transferring certain tasks to the European level that have not been there before and should not be there now. I would give services of general interest as being one example. If we have a proper understanding of subsidiarity, the European level has no business dealing with services of general interest, nor with the coordination of social and economic policy. I do not know what added value there is for Europe in this area, where a bit more subsidiarity and competition among the Member States is more likely to be of benefit to the internal market in terms of the Lisbon objectives being achieved. The same is true of the rules on access to the national labour markets. These are issues on which decisions are the Member States’ responsibility, and questions to which the public expect answers from the Member States rather than from the European level. If we succeed in resolving these problems as well, we will end up with a Treaty that really does deserve to be supported by people throughout Europe. The most honourable thing that the Council can do is to assume responsibility as representatives of the people of Europe."@en1
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"(Applause, heckling and laughter)"1
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