Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-14-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20060614.2.3-013"2
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"Mr President, the success of this week’s Summit rests, first and foremost, on delivering on one concept: democratisation.
So there are two options: renegotiation or oblivion. The sooner we take steps to make structural and substantive improvements to that text and address public concern, the better.
President Barroso, I welcome the vision and determination you are showing today. But I want to hear you say that louder and more often to the Member States. You are right – they are all shareholders in the enterprise, but they have been gripped by a fad for short-termism, and anyway the markets are falling. We need to hammer home to the Member States just how much they need the European Union.
My group thanks the Austrian Presidency for its good work thus far. We wish you success with other important items on your agenda: migration and other aspects of the Hague Programme; social and economic policy; the fundamental rights agency that we so badly need. Make sure too that our Foreign Ministers have aid to Palestine and CIA renditions on their agenda. The fine wines that you served them at Klosterneuburg were a good aperitif. They now need to sit down to the meat.
Democracy, transparency and accountability must be the building blocks that shape the future of our Union. Without a clear commitment to all three, we will be left with the piecemeal solutions that have stalled reform efforts hitherto and reinforced public distrust in the Union.
Europe will be built with the support of the citizens or not at all. Addressing the democratic deficit means an end to the rubber-stamping of regulations behind closed doors. That is why my group congratulates the Austrian Presidency on building on commitments to make transparency the rule rather than the exception in EU policy-making and welcomes the willingness shown by the President of the Commission to publish the names of those who sit on thousands of European Union advisory committees. We still look forward to receiving them, Mr Barroso.
We call on the Council to announce that all discussions on lawmaking by codecision will be open to public view. We know – as the journalist Meg Greenfield wrote – that everybody is for democracy in principle, but it is only in practice that it gives rise to stiff objections. We note that, whatever they say in public, those two old secret plotters, Britain and France – the two countries that nurtured democracy at national level and yet with her offspring now suffer amnesia – are still resisting openness in the Council. It is up to the other countries to pull them kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
In the short term, the Council must put its faith in Parliament and allow us greater legislative scrutiny. Key initiatives, particularly in justice and home affairs, are often hampered by the absence of qualified majority voting and they end in stalemate.
The time has come to apply the
clause of Article 42 and shift policies from the third to the first pillar, as proposed by the Commission in its Communication of 10 May, for our reputation – indeed our influence – rests on upholding values like democracy, liberty and respect for human rights.
Data protection in the third pillar is necessary to ensure protection of personal data. Likewise, minimum procedural guarantees for the European Arrest Warrant – which I had the honour to pilot through this House – have been held up in the Council since 2001.
We want to see progress on all of those issues in order to make the European Union more democratic and more effective. Europe demands no less than an unequivocal drive to democratise decision-making.
In the long term, only a constitutional treaty – as practical as it is ideological – can provide the institutional framework to democratise Europe. But it is also time to recognise that the sixteenth and final Member State likely to ratify the Constitution in its current form is Finland. We must recognise that France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom will never ratify the 2004 text. Denmark, Ireland and Sweden cannot ratify in current circumstances. The Czech Republic and Poland choose not to ratify, and Portugal will find it almost impossible, while committed to a referendum."@en1
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