Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-099"
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"en.20031203.7.3-099"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we are currently devoting a great deal of effort, and attaching a great deal of weight, to discussion of a new constitutional treaty, whereby we provide ourselves with a new legal framework for the future, at the same time as we do this, the larger countries demonstrate their indifference to the law as it stands. I hope you will not mind if a Bavarian like myself draws a parallel. At the time of the Austrian elections, when the coalition came into being, we accused this law-abiding country of illegality and sought to use all our powers to get our own way, and the same is happening now. The larger countries are demonstrating that European law is of no interest to them.
I cannot do other than encourage the Commission to subject what has happened to critical scrutiny, including by their lawyers, because the Council has not only rejected the Commission proposal – as it was entitled to do – but has also disregarded the Commission and simply set new parameters. This is not something that the Council is competent to do and so I cannot do other than offer the Commission encouragement.
Of course, the way the big boys play the game within the European Union has a seriously prejudicial effect on the accession countries, who, as we are aware, will, all ten of them, followed by another two, be signing up to the euro, and all the while we have had one debate after another about the need to keep to the criteria. On what arguments will the Commission or the Council rely in future when telling these countries that they have to stick to the criteria? We ourselves do not, so we can expect that they will do likewise.
The only thing I can actually do is give the Commission my backing. This is where the Commission must proceed with rigour and consistency, and let me issue a warning against negotiating a new Pact; the current situation in Europe being what it is, any new Pact would not be worthy of the name, but would end up as a hotchpotch of wishful thinking and aspirations towards flexibility that bear no relation whatever to what the economy demands. Europe is paying the price for Germany’s failure to do its homework over the past few years, and, at the end of the day, what we are aiming for is to keep the European single currency as a guarantee of economic stability. Thank you."@en1
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