Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-020"
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"en.20070213.3.2-020"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we certainly recognise and respect the seriousness and depth of your European commitment, and your speech, today, sets out some priorities with which – even though they remain a little vague – the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance is substantially in agreement.
In conclusion, I would briefly like to address Mrs Merkel. Your proposals on bureaucracy, on discontinuity and on better regulation leave us rather cold and concerned. The problem of bureaucracy is national rather than European: how many people are there in the delegation accompanying you today? It is certainly more substantial than that accompanying President Barroso, and those complaining of excessive regulations are the multinationals, not the citizens, who say – going by successive Eurobarometer surveys – that they want more laws to protect them, not fewer! Finally, the proposal on discontinuity in fact brings in an opportunity for your institution to boycott and delay all the laws that you do not like.
Mr President, I wish you success in your work and I believe that we will have fun over the next two years.
You rightly recalled this Parliament’s history, and I am very grateful to you for having brought into the Chamber today past presidents of our Parliament. I was able to meet some of them when I arrived in Parliament, as a young and enthusiastic federalist, and to collaborate with many of them on their work: I am therefore truly happy to see them here today.
Despite this, Mr President, we await concrete evidence, and this evidence confronts us with very specific choices, which cannot remain vague. Our Parliament will have to decide whether to remain silent and disciplined or whether to be the forum where action is taken in the name of European interests and values, today almost lost behind diplomatic manoeuvring and national interests. This is our institution’s responsibility: to be a platform for European debate and for proposals for a democratic Europe. In this context, Mr President, the contribution of our institution to resolving the constitutional deadlock must not simply be – as you said, repeating word for word, and surely not by coincidence, what Mrs Merkel said to us – ‘saving the substance of the Constitution’. We cannot be content to ‘save the substance of the Constitution’ in a purely rhetorical fashion.
As a matter of urgency, we must do two things which in the past, under the presidency of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats and under the presidency of Mr Schulz, this Parliament has not been able to achieve – no, I refer to the two presidents of the majority groups – and that is, firstly, to find a consensus on what to do exactly, as Parliament, in a fully autonomous way, with regard to the Constitution and, secondly – more importantly – to fight for the European Parliament to retain the constitutional role won for it by the Convention. If there is to be debate on a timetable or on a proposal, we wish to act, Mrs Merkel, Mr Poettering, as codecision-makers and not observers. Mr Poettering, I want to see you fight for this right of Parliament’s.
Mr President, you spoke of values and cited specific cases relating to the defence of human rights, which is a subject of the utmost importance for our institution. You also spoke of tolerance, a word of which you are very fond. I must tell you, speaking personally, that sometimes this word worries me, because behind the word ‘tolerance’ crimes are committed and individuals’ rights are infringed – crimes and infringements that are, precisely, ‘tolerated’ – and this is something that we absolutely must not forget. This is why we prefer to speak of ‘rights common to all men and all women’, which are equal for everybody and must remain so.
To speak of relations with Russia means bringing up the subject of Chechnya and, responsibly, opening a debate on decreasing energy dependency, which involves strong criticism of those countries – and there are many of them – that are running in a disorganised fashion to the court of ‘Czar’ Putin. In our dialogue with the United States we must not forget the death penalty in force in that country, CIA flights, the issue of passenger data, and pre-emptive war. Finally, with regard to the defence of human rights we must not forget, by means of small emergency resolutions, to defend those individuals who by themselves, forgotten in some prison or some forest, are defending those rights. Merely speaking of security, Mr President – and you spoke at length of it, in the name of our Parliament – cannot make the resolutions that have been adopted in favour of disarmament and a code of conduct on arms progress to the second stage.
Mr President, we will be very active in the work on internal reform. There are two subjects that you did not mention and that seem to me to be fundamental: the first is the debate on Parliament’s seat. I hope that you, personally, and the parliamentary groups will have the courage to hold a debate in this Chamber on the European Parliament’s seat. Perhaps the home of European history may best be located here, in this very beautiful building. Who knows? I think, however, that it is important for you to truly take the initiative in tackling the problem of where Parliament should meet.
The second subject – and I know very well that I will have to work hard here to convince you – is making this institution greener, not from a political point of view but in terms of its environmental sustainability. I will succeed in convincing you, I am absolutely certain of it, since every day the resources wasted even by this Assembly in terms of water, light and official cars is something that, if we want to be true to our commitments on climate change, we cannot tolerate."@en1
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