Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-17-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20031217.1.3-014"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this has been an unending tale of woe ever since 1998, and I believe that the reason for this is the absence from any of the Council’s statements over past years of any clear indication of its position. All the letters to which reference has been made were in legalese and gave no clear indication of what the Council was prepared to accept; even today, we have heard nothing along these lines. Having heard the Council’s presentation this morning, I can, quite simply, come to no other conclusion.
Having said that, the Council’s position, as it has crystallised over the past months, is dishonest and mendacious; I make no bones about saying that, and I do so with reference to one decisive point, namely the way in which the taxation issue has been handled. The Council accuses this House of taking the Statute as an opportunity to interfere in issues primary legislation, but the Council itself evidently sees nothing problematic in the way it seeks, in this Statute, to deal with such primary law issues as taxes. The question is, therefore: what do you actually want, and how, when you have it, is it meant to work?
We know from the information given us by all three legal services – Parliament’s, the Council’s and the Commission’s – that what is actually proposed here is contrary to the law, yet this Parliament is nonetheless prepared to go along with it. Here and now, though, I can tell you that, in the event of this resolution being passed and of some Member State or other availing itself of this option, the matter is certain to end up in court – eventually in the European Court of Justice, which will have to hand down a ruling. With the draft resolution that has now been put on the table, I believe we have reached the limit; we can do no more.
Earlier on, Mr Karas was right to say that we too, in this House, have a dignity of our own. I believe that the offer has now been made, and what we are now waiting for is a definite statement of the Council’s position by 15 January at the latest. This is also about what can be expected of our future colleagues, whose nomination processes are currently underway in the Member States. They, too, have to know under what conditions they will be working in future in this Parliament. The deadline, then, is 15 January. By then, we want to know for sure what the Council wants, and what it does not want, or else this statute will have run out of time in the life of this Parliament."@en1
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