Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-07-21-Speech-3-026"
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"en.20040721.1.3-026"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, I think Mr Allister threw something pretty amazing into the debate by saying, as he did, ‘I am against the European institutions, but in favour of Europe giving Northern Ireland lots of money.’ That is not, I think, the way we should think in this House.
The region from which I come was – like Mr Voggenhuber’s part of the world – converted to Christianity by an Irishman, Saint Boniface, known as the Apostle to the Germans. I hope you will not come to the same end as Boniface, who was killed by the Frisians, most of whom are now Dutch. It is of course purely fortuitous that we now have a Dutch Presidency of the Council.
From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you, Taoiseach, your Foreign Minister Dick Roche, your team, but also a number of people sitting further back in its second, third and fourth rows, whose extraordinary dedication and expertise have made it possible for us to have a European Constitution. In doing that, Ireland has written history. This constitution does not bring about a superstate; instead, it creates balance by allocating competences, a role of which national parliaments fight shy. It is meant to create a fair balance between the levels. The citizens have a part to play, because the Charter of Fundamental Rights gives them rights, and so, in future, there can be no such playing about with the presidency of the Commission as we have experienced this year, for it will be the citizens who will decide who the President of the Commission is to be. We will see decisive improvements. There will be a canon of values; it is a veritable miracle that twenty-five states can agree on one that is binding, one that – as I see it – is founded upon the Christian conception of what man is. This canon of values will enable us to really join together in making policies, rather than relying on the mechanistic process envisaged by the old treaties. It also gives the EU a capacity to act.
It is vital that we should all go back to our own countries and ensure that the ratification goes through. We should not be discussing – as people are in some of our countries, including my own – what is most advantageous in terms of party or domestic politics, or how we can thereby make a name for ourselves. I hope that the governments – and oppositions too – in all our countries will be strong enough to embark upon this ratification process with a sense of responsibility for us all and not with a view to showing their party to its best advantage in domestic politics. That is what our task will be now."@en1
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