Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-025"
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"en.20070213.3.2-025"2
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"Mr President, Chancellor Merkel, Mr Barroso, esteemed former Presidents of this Chamber, whom I remember with pleasure from the Conference of the Presidents, we now have Mr Poettering as President, and he is eager for a bigger dose of the EU, even though he also cleverly talks about subsidiarity. He should allow himself a referendum in which he might convince his fellow Germans that they too should vote in favour of a Constitution with more laws and regulations made in Brussels. Three thousand regulations are not enough. It is not enough that 86% of the laws ratified in the German
are now enacted in Brussels. Listen to the warning from the former German President, Roman Herzog, who headed our Charter Convention. Note the results of the referendums in France and the Netherlands. The French and the Dutch had a chance to vote in favour of the Constitution, and they threw it away. The lesson now drawn from this is that we should never again have a referendum. The former President of the
’s Europe Committee, Jürgen Meier, also stated in the Constitutional Convention that a voluntary referendum could be agreed in the
with an ordinary majority sought. Why not allow the Germans to express their opinion on the Constitution that the President and the German Presidency of the Council are so keen to see adopted?
Officials in Brussels and the judges in Luxembourg have a pathological attachment to supersizing and have a fear of democracy. They have not understood the modern trend towards slimmed-down organisations, decentralised accountability and outsourcing. What is good enough for businesses is not good enough for the EU. Nothing is to be farmed out from Brussels to the Member States or to the citizens. Laws are much better for having been drawn up by 3 000 secret working parties in the Commission and adopted by 300 secret working parties in the Council of Ministers, as well as by 15 000 professional lobbyists. Long live technocracy in a corporate EU! Mrs Mussolini can spare a friendly thought for her grandfather’s dedication to corporatism. The voters can be allowed to go to the polls every five years and vote in favour of someone who can neither propose nor adopt laws. Elected representatives can only advise the Commission by tabling amendments. That is what it all comes down to at present, and a similar mindset is also at the heart of the Constitution – only in many more areas.
If something cannot be adopted by Council ministers and officials, there is always the possibility of going to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg with proposals that neither the electorate, national parliaments nor governments will know anything about. Unanimously adopted penalties in connection with environmental issues are deemed unlawful because the judges want to see such penalties adopted by majority decision-making and well within their own control. Enshrined as it is in treaties and draft constitutions alike, property law is clearly a matter for the Member States. However, the obligation incumbent on farmers to reside on their own farms is judged to be unlawful, despite the unanimous verdict of the Danish Parliament to the contrary. Voters and their parliaments are regarded as incapable, and family holdings are seen as being out of date. Let us, rather, have a bunch of jumped-up Prussian-style Junkers running agriculture everywhere in the EU. Farmers are not good enough, and nor are employees’ and employers’ collective agreements, penal legislation, national judges or the voters. The EU grandees know far better.
We have won many small victories for openness, and the
in Berlin has introduced the best rules yet for scrutinising the EU. The time has now come when the threefold division of power into openness, proximity and democracy needs to govern the whole of the EU. There must be no more laws that cannot be amended by elected representatives. There must be no more laws that cannot be amended by the voters at the next election. There must be no more treaties and constitutions that have not been adopted by the voters in referendums held throughout the EU, and preferably on the same day.
The President mentioned our electronic voting equipment. I fondly recall the time when the new system from Olivetti was introduced. It is a system I should like to have back again, for then my proposals could actually be adopted."@en1
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