Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-27-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20070627.3.3-020"2
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".
President-in-Office, congratulations on a green light for Europe and a grand legacy for your leadership.
As for the content, President-in-Office, the devil will be in the detail. Your propensity to play the fairy godmother means, I am afraid, that the naysayers
were rewarded in proportion to their negativity, while the friends of the Constitution – the silent majority – received precious little for supporting the Constitution signed by all Member States in Rome.
And so the French and the Dutch struck again with a side-swipe at fair and open markets. The full effects of the British and Polish derogation from the Charter of Fundamental Rights are not yet known. For Liberals and Democrats it beggars belief that a British Prime Minister is depriving UK citizens of the rights which made his country respected – and which are now guaranteed to other citizens – in order to pander to the popular press.
Only time will tell whether the changes to the text are cosmetic, or a wholesale attack on Europe’s fundamental civic and market values. However, politics is always a matter of
.
While the result is not flawless, the edifice you have built is sturdy: the roof should not leak as long as the building blocks of progress are cemented by the mortar of determination.
Let us remind national leaders here and now that Europe demands give as well as take. Until they resolve to cooperate fully, the Union will never be fit for purpose.
President-in-Office, six months is barely long enough for an EU President to shine. However, as the leader who brought us the promise of a permanent President your reign was memorable. Who else can boast of ending deadlock in the Council and ridding us of the much-maligned pillar structure? Who else can claim credit for creating a European Diplomatic Service and a High Representative to boost our role on the world stage, and who else would have achieved so much without action which was
?
The Portuguese Presidency must harness this momentum to ensure future developments are driven not by events beyond our continent, but, in the best tradition of the European Union, by idealism within.
Action on climate change and energy security had made yours a noteworthy Presidency. Securing agreement for reform of our Union has made it a
Presidency.
Joseph Conrad once observed ‘Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men’.
Nowhere was this truer than in the Council, where many of your counterparts seemed intent on burying Treaty reform. It is a tribute to your character that you convinced, cajoled, and cautioned agreement where none had seemed possible.
Who in the months following 2005’s referendum results would have thought that institutional reform was still within reach; that Europe’s leaders would recognise the need for common action on energy security, climate change, foreign policy or shelve requirements for unanimity in the Council in favour of qualified majority voting in 36 new policy areas?
We are pleased too that you recognised Europe’s growing political pluralism by giving Parliament three representatives at the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference. Combined with making justice and home affairs subject to parliamentary scrutiny, this proves that European democracy has come of age and that this House is now an equal partner in governance.
Agreement came at a price, however, and that price was not simply a derogation here and an opt-out there. The real casualty was idealism: losing the symbols of our Union and replacing the relative simplicity of the Constitutional Treaty with bureaucratic opaqueness is a pity.
As a result, your new Amending Treaty reads like the instructions for building a Japanese pagoda translated into English by the Chinese middle-man."@en1
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"die Verfassungsfeinde heissen sie immer noch in Bayern"1
"hart aber herzlich"1
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