Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-166"
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"en.20041117.9.3-166"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the speech you delivered today, Mr Barroso, demonstrates that substantial changes have taken place since your last speech, when you were presenting your proposals for the Commission – these have been changes in the right direction, changes demonstrating that you have drawn conclusions from what happened before the last plenary part-session here in Strasbourg. We believe that you should have learned those lessons earlier, but never mind; you have arrived at the right answers, and the proposals you have announced today and will be presenting tomorrow are better than what you put forward a fortnight ago. This Commission is of higher quality. That is progress, and it could have been much better than it is. It is at this point that I will address Mr Balkenende and say that it could have been much better than it is if your government, Mr Balkenende, had acted to resolve an issue about which we have had very lively discussions and will continue to do so.
If you gain our approval, that is approval for the composition of this Commission and a signal for the work to begin. It is not a statement about the legislative programme that you will be putting forward in January, which we will judge, not by the people in the Commission, but by its contents. The 200 Social Democrats sitting in this Chamber were elected because the people of Europe have expectations; they do not want the social achievements that we, the European Left, have successfully fought for in the Member States of the European Union to be cut back by a Commission in Brussels; on the contrary, they expect that Commission to secure them. That is particularly true of the Lisbon process, which is a process of growth, but must also be a process leading to social cohesion and social stability. By that we shall judge you.
It is for that reason that we are willing to cooperate constructively with you and with your Commission. Mr Barroso, I have had many opportunities for discussions with you over the past weeks, and it was only yesterday that I saw at first hand your own hard work, for which you have my personal respect. I sometimes wonder whether that hard work is a response to the pressures of the situation. If it were no more than that, that would be a bad thing, but if what we have here is an ongoing endeavour, if you – as you stated in your speech – know that the Commission whose President you are is composed of diverse political tendencies, the same as are to be found in the Council, in the make-up of the governments represented in it, and in this House, and that in all three institutions Social Democrats have a decisive role to play, and if you bear that in mind in your own personal work, in the work of the Commission and in your legislative proposals, then you can expect the Social Democrats in this House to support you. If you fail to take that to heart, then remember October 2004, for that is what will then happen again.
However much regard I have for your Presidency of the Council and for you personally, I found it regrettable that the Italian Government took a more flexible approach than did its Dutch counterpart. I think we will have to have further discussions about the conclusions we should draw from what happened. Mr Barroso has alluded to some of them, and it is a subject to which I shall shortly return.
One thing, though, is perfectly clear, and that is that if this House has become stronger in relation to the Commission and also the Council – and it has become stronger – then my group has played a decisive part in that. Of that I am proud, but, as we have just heard, there are always many who can claim a share in credit for victory. That those who sat out the battle hiding in the bushes should now, apparently, be the loudest in proclaiming victory, may well be understandable in human terms, but it is not politically justified.
There are another two points that we will have to sort out with Mr Barroso. Firstly, you have announced that you will be carrying on with the agreements that Mr Prodi made with Parliament following the change of Commission in 1999. You will have to be more precise about what you mean by that. This is an issue to which we have returned in the resolutions we have submitted. Making things more precise means that we assume that the undertaking still stands according to which Commissioners leave the Commission as and when you demand that they do so and that this will initially be dealt with within the Commission. We also take it as read that you accept, in individual cases where there is hard evidence from Commissioners’ conduct in office of incompatibilities with their previous activities, that you will have recourse to this when Parliament requires it. That is what we expect of you, and I think there were indications in what you said today, that you do, and that you will go into more detail about it tomorrow. It also features in our resolution and is something on which we insist.
In the previous part-session, Mr Barroso, you attempted – and were, I think, ill-advised to do so – to get together a majority to defeat the Socialist Group, but in that you did not succeed. If there have been changes in this Commission, they have come about as a result of proposals made by the Socialist Group and of vigorous pressure exerted by it. If you want a broad majority in this House, you will not get one without the Socialist Group.
For that reason, and also because a large proportion of your Commissioners belongs to our political family, I recommend that you seek our group’s cooperation. A Commission supported by a broad majority in this House is a strong Commission; that would in any case be better than to depend on the votes of the extreme Right. That, today, is something I want to have set down."@en1
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