Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-26-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20041026.5.2-023"2
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".
Mr President, three months ago, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats urged the President–designate of the Commission to respect the prerogatives of this Parliament. My Group and this House have offered a sober and considered rejection of his nominee for Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs.
How many of Europe's governments would have done what Mr Berlusconi probably did and told you to take their man
even if it left you with a Commission containing a Commissioner whose political feet of clay would probably disqualify him from inclusion in most of the European Union's national governments?
My Group feels that Member States owe Europe their best and their brightest. How many governments have shown their willingness to accept the democratic and legal right of our Parliament to judge the men and women who were proposed? The silence you hear is the sound of Europe's governments leaving you and your new Commission swinging in the wind.
As the defenders of the Community method, the strength of our House is ultimately the strength of yours. Because if the Council can mock the prerogative of this Parliament, then be absolutely sure that it thinks the same of the independence of your Commission.
The Council prefers this Parliament to be weak. Too many in the Council find it convenient for the Commission to be weak. My Group wants this Parliament to be strong, because we cannot conceive of a strong European Union without it. And we want your Commission to be strong because the European Union needs an independent executive of the highest calibre. We have demanded a new framework agreement with your Commission: draft it and sign it, so that we will not be brought to this impasse again.
This House faces a heavy choice. If Liberals and Democrats vote against the Commission-designate, we will not do so lightly. But we cannot, and we will not, diminish the status of this House, the standing of the Civil Liberties Committee or the stature of the post of the European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs in the interest of an easy life. You might say – if I can use Mr Buttiglione's own words – that we will not change our principles against our conscience for political convenience.
Mr Barroso, we recognise that you could work only with what you were given. We recognise that your independence is not total. We have, on the whole, offered our support for the other members of your Commission. But our judgement stands, and it will be respected. This Group supported you as President of the Commission; we voted for you; we still support you. But we value the prerogatives of this House too highly to see them taken lightly.
I welcome the package of measures that you have put before this House today. I believe you come here in a genuine search for rapprochement. Some of the measures you propose are bold and all of them are important. I believe that you are committed personally to the promotion of fundamental rights and that this spirit will infuse the Commission you will lead. Liberals and Democrats will consider your proposals carefully. But I am bound to say that they come late in the day and they contain little about Mr Buttiglione's future, a future which may be intimately bound to the future of the Commission-designate.
This House is not asking to be placated or patronised.
We are asking that the other branches of our European government recognise what our Treaties recognise and what the European Constitution recognises: that power in Europe rests in some measure with this Chamber and its elected Members. The approval process is not a rubber stamp and this Parliament should not be treated as one.
It has been said often in the last week that it will be Liberals and Democrats who decide the fate of this Commission. But Liberals and Democrats did not nominate the Commissioners rejected by Parliament's committees. It was not Liberals and Democrats who would not or could not find the compromise that might have put Mr Buttiglione beyond the reach of controversy. Whatever happens tomorrow, the fate of this Commission has more than one architect.
Moreover, I know that I am not the only one in this Chamber who feels that there is an invisible elephant in the room. The elephant is Justus Lipsius. The elephant is in the heads of the governments who gave you a weaker Commission than you deserve, and then refused to come to your aid when our House called their bluff."@en1
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"(Loud applause from the left and centre)"1
"basta"1
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