Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-27-Speech-3-026"
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"en.20070627.3.3-026"2
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".
Mr President, Mrs Merkel, you will have to excuse me for the fact that I too have chosen to opt out of the jubilant mood that prevails in this House following the agreement that was reached at the European Summit. I will not be expecting then any kisses from Mr Schulz or Mr Cohn-Bendit, but I think I will live.
What was predicted has come to pass: the so-called reform treaty has turned out to be nothing more and nothing less than a camouflaged version of the European Constitution, in other words, we are getting old wine in new bottles.
The reform treaty does not create more transparency. In fact, the text has become more incomprehensible than ever before. Nothing fundamental is being done about the democratic deficit. There is no mention of referendums in the Member States; the role which the national parliaments will be playing will, in practice, be non-existent given the high threshold that is being built in; the European Union’s boundaries are not any closer to being defined. Even the Dutch proposal to include the Copenhagen criteria in the text has been thrown out. The typically Belgian compromise – if I can put it this way – about the decision-making process takes no account of the fact that the smaller Member States will lose out in terms of influence. Finally, European legislation clearly prevails over national legislation.
I can assure you, Mrs Merkel, that the triumphalism will be short-lived. People are refusing to take the referendums in France and the Netherlands into account. If this is the upshot of a two-year period of reflection, then I am bound to say that this is a deeply sad state of affairs. The triumphalism will be short-lived if no new referendums are held therefore. In the other Member States too, the distrust of the people will only increase, because the EU’s democratic support base has become very flimsy. There is an enormous chasm between European officialdom and the man in the street – this is, in fact, also borne out by Turkey’s possible accession to the European Union – and I regret having to affirm, Mrs Merkel, that you have not taken any initiatives either in order to close the gap between the citizen and public opinion in one way or another.
Whatever happens, something will need to be done as a matter of urgency. It is high time the European Union started to take public opinion in Europe into account."@en1
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