Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-28-Speech-3-042"
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"en.20040128.4.3-042"2
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"Although we do not propose to take a debate on this matter, I hope the House will permit me to make a brief response on its behalf.
First, I should like through you to thank the Irish presidency for the determined effort you have made in this regard, and for the integrity of purpose which you have brought to this task. As you reported, the presidency was unable to secure a majority. This is not a failure of the presidency; it may well be a failure of the Council, but one needs to distinguish between these things. I regret the lost opportunity that your statement indicates. I should like to point out - in relation to the work done by my predecessors and myself, and especially the unceasing work done by our rapporteur Mr Rothley and colleagues in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market - that this is a very frustrating outcome from the point of view of the majority of this House after a long process of engagement between Parliament and Council, initiated in its most recent form at the Cardiff Summit during the British presidency in 1998. I express a personal disappointment in this regard and I believe that we in this House have acted in entirely good faith throughout our negotiations and our engagement with the Council in this regard.
It is, I am bound to say, difficult to conclude an agreement with another instance of authority in the Union when the ground shifts and the goalposts are moved. We believed that the majority in this House last December had sought to reconcile the various points of view indicated in good faith by all of the actors at that stage.
I believe this failure is, I regret to say, symptomatic of a Europe that is exhibiting a greater capacity for dysfunction than function on a key number of constitutional questions. I hope we can rediscover the spirit of Europe and not what blocked this important - and, in its own small way - constitutional initiative.
I thank you again, Minister, for the work the presidency has done and again let me underline a strong personal view that the inability to deliver a positive result here today which you have conveyed to us is no reflection on the determined effort and the high integrity of purpose which the presidency and other presidencies in the past have brought to this important task."@en1
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