Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-014"
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"en.20040914.2.2-014"2
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"Mr President, Liberals and Democrats in this House welcome your Presidency Programme and we offer you our support in your work. When you speak impartially for this House, when you are a credit to its standing and a defender of its prerogatives, you can count on our backing.
The stature of this Parliament is growing, and the stature of its Presidency must grow with it. You have inherited a House larger by some eight dozen MEPs and richer by nine new official languages. It is a machine of four and a half thousand parts, speaking twenty languages, a million words a week. The parts must move in time, the machine must stay in motion. You must make sure that it does.
Benjamin Franklin once said of the Vice-Presidency of the United States - before the days of Dick Cheney - that it was a position so lacking in influence and stature that its holder should be addressed as 'your superfluous excellency'. The European Parliament cannot afford a superfluous excellency, because you will be our voice; you will speak for us in the Council; you will be the will of this House: you will be our resolution.
Every one of us carries the burden of building the legitimacy of this House and thus European democracy and the work that it does - but none more than you. In your opening remarks you spoke of two sources of legitimacy. This House indeed has a particular duty to stand up for the rights of European Union citizens. Sometimes that means defending their rights from encroachment by the Union's Member States. I think, for example, of the nine million stateless Roma or the citizens of Cyprus and also of the people of Gibraltar, now represented in this House for the first time, thanks to a judgment in the European Court of Justice. I am proud to be one of Gibraltar's representatives here, because only in Europe can Gibraltar look across the line at La Linea, or at the British battleship in the Bay of Algeciras and finally see no contradiction. This House is the manifestation of the belief that we are better than our histories and more than our nationalities and it must be manifest in its President.
In two areas of your mandate you can expect aggressive backing from Liberals and Democrats. The first is in reform of this House. An enlarged Parliament means a reformed Parliament. We welcome your emphasis today on reform of the Members' Statute. The package agreed at the end of the last session is not an end but a point of departure. We cannot hide behind it. We must call the bluff of European governments and go straight back to work, because for our voters the price of legitimacy is open and ambitious reform, nothing less.
The second area is the defence of the European Constitution. Here we expect you to lead a concerted campaign across the continent. So renew your frequent flyer package: Europe has never had a more important product to sell.
Mr President, Liberals and Democrats in this House urge imagination and we expect ambition. Political institutions rise and fall by the respect that they command. For a quarter of a century this Chamber has gathered powers and asked European citizens for respect, for trust. We must wake and work and sleep as if that trust must be won anew every day. In wishing you well in your term of office, Mr President, I would say that we expect nothing less from you."@en1
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