Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-23-Speech-4-012"
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"en.20050623.4.4-012"2
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".
Mr President, Prime Minister and future President-in-Office of the European Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, we heard yesterday a significant speech by the outgoing President-in-Office of the European Council, Mr Jean-Claude Juncker. Today finds us hearing another significant speech by the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and incoming President-in-Office of the European Council. I would also like to express my thanks to the President of the Commission for his speeches yesterday and today.
We now have to resolve the crisis of confidence in which we find ourselves, to re-establish trust between the actors in the European Council and regain the confidence of the public. It follows that what is in the Constitution, our common values and the decision-making processes that we need in order to resolve the issues about our future must become legal and political realities. What I ask is that we should not take this pause for reflection as a pause as such, but as a pause in which to think about how we can establish a legal – and hence political – foundation on which this European Union of ours can become effective in the future.
You now have an immense task ahead of you, one about which Mr Juncker spoke yesterday: the Financial Perspective, about which there was a fair old bit of haggling at the European Council. Mr Böge has put forward a proposal from this House relating to the Financial Perspective, and, if you want the possibility of compromise, I urge you to be guided by it. Mr Blair, you are a Labour Prime Minister; it was our friend John Major who, as the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister in 1992, managed to put together a Financial Perspective for the whole of the European Union, which was at that time the European Community. I wish you, a Labour Prime Minister, the same success that the Conservative, John Major, had in 1992.
Now for my final point, if the President will allow me a few seconds more. You said that we have to carry the people with us. We must indeed carry the public with us, but the public want to have a sense of being representative of their own countries as well as of being Europeans together. Let us then think about the borders of the European Union; not every country that wants to join it should be welcomed in, for then Europe would risk losing its identity. Let us go to work on Europe together. Prime Minister, it is now 10 a.m., while in the United Kingdom, where the clocks keep rather different time, it is 9 a.m. You got up early this morning. Let us always get up early to go to work on Europe! We need, though, to be calm in action, so we need to have had a good night’s sleep. Our vision is still a vision of Europe; make it a reality, and we will be by your side.
Having been a Member of this House since 1979, I have to say that there has never, in all those years, been such intensive debate about the future shape of the European Union as we have had yesterday and today. That is a victory for democracy, a victory for parliamentarianism, a victory for the people of Europe, as the fact that this debate is open to the public means that the people of Europe can participate in it. It is for that reason that these two days – yesterday and today – must be our starting point when it comes to informing the European public throughout the European Union, and it is here that the debates must be conducted. For that reason, our debates yesterday and today are already of major importance.
It is also necessary for each succeeding President-in-Office of the European Council to justify his conduct in this Chamber and before the European Parliament whenever he has met with defeat, as he did last weekend. Defeat on the financial issue was not in itself all that tragic, but, because it came on top of the defeats in the referenda, that made the crisis all the more acute. We insist that it is not behind the closed doors of the European Council that the great debates on our future must be held, but here in the midst of the representatives of the peoples of the European Union, here in the European Parliament. That is how it must be in the future!
You, the incoming President-in-Office of the European Council, have an immense and difficult task ahead of you. You spoke about respect. There is indeed a need for respect in Europe, not just respect for the great, but for great and small alike. We want no new axes forged between the major states in Europe; we want every country and every citizen to be taken seriously, for this Europe of ours is one in which we share together, and we want it to be a strong Europe, a strong European Union and a Europe that is a Community. That is our goal, and it is one from which we shall never be deflected.
It is for that reason that we are glad that you began your speech by saying that your model does not involve retreating to a free trade area. If your actions reflect your words, if what you do in practice makes clear your desire for a community in Europe, then we are right alongside you. When it comes to reforming European policies, you gain in credibility if you leave no room for doubt about your European vocation, and I ask that you make this clear during your Presidency."@en1
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