Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-22-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20050622.13.3-027"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, totting up the debits and credits of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council has been an emotional business. We have heard a speech that was extraordinary not only by reason of the character of the man delivering it, but also by reason of its extraordinary frankness.
It is not acceptable that everyone sitting around the table should be saying ‘I’m right’. Then the next person to be called upon to speak says, ‘I’m right, too’. The third person to speak also says, ‘That may well be so, but I’m right’.
How such people can reach a result that is of any use to Europe escapes me. Above all else, I simply do not see how a head of government, of whatever country, can say, ‘I have quite specific goals’, and then, by his own actions, help to wreck the instruments that are needed in order to achieve those goals. I simply do not get it, and I do not see this as something that this House can take lying down.
What is the Financial Perspective about? It is about everyone making a move. We do, of course know that our continent’s ability to survive depends on our promotion of innovation, research and technology, and that these things are crucial to the Lisbon process. We also know, of course, that we need money in order to do these things, and that it follows that money has to be reassigned. Yet, if everyone knows that, why do we not get the right results?
Let me tell you what I think, what my very personal opinion is: it is that the reason lies in the fact that, this weekend, European policy was, yet again, not the deciding factor. Things were of course said about Europe’s future, but most of the speeches made there were devoted to internal policy. We all know that there is a great island state in this Union, where internal party constraints limit room for manoeuvre. We all know too that there is a great continental state in this Union in which the results of elections hang upon agriculture. There may be many more internal policy considerations than these two, the effects of which on European policy we Europeans have to live with, so let us, in this House, unite in saying that we are no longer prepared to do so, for this is proving to be Europe’s ruin!
The President deserves praise for having, today, delivered himself of a fine affirmation of his role in Europe. You, Mr Barroso, are indeed the guardian of the European Treaties. Nobody will be able to make the Treaty of Nice serve as the basis for a free trade zone; it may be inadequate, but it has taken the process of integration far too far for that to be possible, and if you want to defend the deepening of Europe, this House will always be right alongside you. What the people of Europe are now waiting for, though, is signals from Europe; we do indeed need the market, we do indeed need internal and external competition, but those in the Netherlands and in France who voted ‘no’ did so not least because they feared that this market, this competition, would wreck their social security, destroying what has been built up over decades. In the realm of practical politics, we in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament have produced a five-point plan showing how you can help get the Working Time Directive and the Services Directive adopted as social – rather than as anti-social – legislation. That will give you a chance to show where the Commission stands.
We have heard a great speech from a great President. Not only he, but also the Luxembourg team as a whole have – as the President of the Commission rightly said – done a terrific job, and for that, Mr Juncker, I thank you, as well as Mr Schmit and all those who have worked together with us this past six months. Working with the Luxembourg Presidency was – I believe, for all of us – an extraordinarily pleasant business. Differences of opinion are not always so pleasant in this political life. Thank you for your speech, and I believe I speak for many of my colleagues when I say that I look forward to tomorrow with eager anticipation.
I have been a Member of this House for 11 years. In all that time, I have never come across such frankness in a presentation on a European Council by its Presidency.
For this frankness I am grateful, for it gives this House greater knowledge and hence affords it the opportunity to better analyse what transpired last weekend. A lot happened, and let me repeat at the very outset what you, Mr President-in-Office, said: it was a defeat for Europe. You were right there. You went on to say that it also represented a defeat for the Presidency, but that is where you are wrong. Anyone who saw you over the weekend – and we all did – saw something that was not a defeat for the Council Presidency. It may well, today, be too early to judge, but I am quite certain that those who come after us will rank Jean-Claude Juncker among the truly great Europeans.
For that we are grateful to you. After 60 hours of negotiations, followed by a 15-minute visit from one who had participated in them, we can understand some of the bitterness that came out in your speech, for it is a fact that what emerges from this summit is that the time really has come for the European Union to spell out the facts. Europe is indeed in a crisis situation, but then so are its Heads of State or Government. The fact is that, for years, the people who hold the reins of power in Europe – in other words, the European Council, the Heads of State or Government – have invariably taken the same approach. Victory was theirs; it was the Brussels bureaucrats who lost.
It became clear from last weekend’s summit that we can now put a name to what has caused Europe to lose out: the particularism of those Heads of State or Government who believe that the interests of all are served when each thinks only of himself.
Parliaments exist to give expression to what the public feels, and you are right to say that high diplomacy belongs somewhere else; this is where the truth has to be told.
Today, Mr Juncker, I want to give you every credit for telling it like it is and for calling things by their proper names. We have lessons to learn from that, and one important one is that we should start by noting that, of the three institutions, two have done their homework; the Commission produced its proposal for the Financial Perspective, and Parliament decided on its position, while the Council has shown itself incapable of coming to an agreement on it. Let me point out that two of the institutions that participate in the trialogue have done what they had to do. The Council has not, and we will wait."@en1
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