Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-18-Speech-2-049"
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"en.20031118.2.2-049"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by impressing upon us two mottos for the Commission and for our own work. The first is this: ‘Not in the beginning is the reward, but only in consistent perseverance, the setting and achievement of objectives’. And the second is this: ‘He who does not take himself seriously will not be taken seriously by others’. Although we went into the Convention aiming to make Europe more transparent, to bring it closer to its citizens and to make it more democratic, we have not yet made that a reality. The objectives are more relevant than ever. So, Mr President of the Commission, he who would make Europe more transparent must be prepared to know his own tasks and pursue objectives in a consistent way. What that means is that I am calling for greater earnestness, a more earnest approach to Parliament, to our resolutions, to our aims, to our fears and criticisms and to make our self-image as a corporate body a reality.
We get more and more proposals that actually ought never to have emerged from the Commission: on lines of credit for consumers; the Chemicals Directive; for the prohibition of discrimination, which flies in the face of economic reality; there is the harmonisation of duty on diesel, which has been thought through sector by sector rather than as a whole. I urge you to take up your collegial responsibility; with specific reference to Eurostat and to the statements you have made today, I demand that you take your political responsibility more seriously. With the Stability and Growth Pact in mind, I demand that you insist on compliance with the law. We read in your programme your call for better coordination of the Member States’ economic and budgetary policies, but I can tell you that we have no need of better coordination; what we need is compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact. To do that would make for enough coordination!
I call upon you to take initiatives to strengthen the internal market, competition policy and social cohesion. If you also put yourself at the head of projects to create a sense of European identity, that will play a part in making European policy domestic policy, so that the internal politics of the Council will not be able to block European projects, for which people at home will blame the Commission and Parliament."@en1
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