Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-23-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20050623.4.4-020"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of the Conservative delegation and my European Democrat colleagues, can I welcome the Prime Minister and say that we hope the British presidency will indeed be a truly reforming one.
It is important for our country and our national interest that Britain gives leadership to Europe at a time when fundamental questions on its future are being asked. However, it has to be the right kind of leadership and it has to be the right kind of future. The events of recent weeks have indeed been a wake-up call for politicians across the Union. The fact that the people of France and the Netherlands, two founding States, voted emphatically against the Constitution has to be of profound significance.
I regret that the European Council did not respond decisively to these votes by declaring the Constitution dead. Mr Blair has said that there needs to be a real debate on the kind of European Union that we want in the future and I agree with him. I look to him to lead that debate in the coming months.
We hope that he will show his leadership by explaining exactly what he meant by his comments the other day that there is more than one view on Europe's future. Earlier this week Mr Blair said the crisis is about the failure of leaders to reach agreement with the people who see the world changing, and who want answers to the challenges they face. Well, British Conservatives have been saying this for years about the European Union as we have led the way here in the fields of liberalising our economies, deregulation, the Lisbon Agenda and open accountability and control of our budgets.
If he is now rather belatedly accepting our positions, I certainly welcome his conversion. However, this is not just a crisis of leadership, as he says, but it is also a crisis of legitimacy within the EU institutions. Fine words from our government are all very well, but what we now need is action. The social model has not succeeded in Europe and millions of unemployed with low growth and inflexible labour markets personify economic decline. We now have to compete with India, China and the United States, and the longer we brush the reality aside, the Lisbon Agenda remains nothing but an aspiration.
I turn now to the future financing of the Union. The Prime Minister was right to defend the British rebate. There is a reason for this rebate existing, and it is as strong as it was in 1984. The apparent slippage in the Government's position, which has been confirmed this morning by the Prime Minister, is of concern to us and we obviously watch carefully to ensure that British taxpayers do not become pawns in discussions over the future of our budget.
In conclusion I want to urge the Prime Minister not to be deflected from his stated goals of reform in the Union. We want his rhetoric of recent days to be matched by real leadership and real action.
We hope that he can deliver. It is the interests of all of us that he delivers what he says he will. When we judge him in December we hope that he will not have failed us."@en1
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