Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-27-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20070627.6.3-045"2
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"Mr President, it is true that it is difficult to resist the temptation to congratulate the Chancellor, and, I may add, I am not resisting it. Mrs Merkel, I congratulate you, even though I will remain more doubtful of the future treaty itself. At the end of the day, however, the reform of the treaties was at a standstill, Europe was stuck in a rut, its unity had been tested, and you gave it another chance.
The agreement passed on 23 June in Brussels is a complicated compromise, one that was reached after much effort in a Council that is marked more by the national tensions of some than by the universal sharing of the European spirit; a compromise reached at the expense of the ridiculous relinquishment of the EU symbols and of the appalling opt-out on the Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, this is at least an agreement that has come at a time when Europe needs to affirm its unity and its desire to move forward so as to meet the citizens' expectations and to rise to the challenges it faces in the world and within Europe. Every opportunity must therefore be given to the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference.
As for the treaty itself, we will be able to give a definitive judgment on it only after we have seen the final text that will be derived from it. Doubts remain, but the mandate does at least have the virtue of taking up the institutional innovations that were contained in the first part of the draft constitution and that have scarcely been challenged, even in countries in which the 'No' vote prevailed in the referendum. I am referring to the enhanced powers of the European Parliament, to the Common Foreign and Security Policy, to the new majority decision-making rules and to the shift to unanimity on a number of issues and, therefore, from this point of view, I hope that the outcome will make it possible for the progress contained in the draft Constitution to be confirmed.
Having said that, there are two points that I should like to highlight as being important to our group and that concern the European Union’s social dimension. On the one hand, there was an article on the horizontal social clause and, on the other, an article providing a legal basis for the adoption of a directive on services of general economic interest. On these two points, the mandate of the Intergovernmental Conference remains vague. We will be very vigilant when it comes to ensuring that, after having renounced the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Member States gathered within the IGC do not further undermine these two possible advances in the social dimension of the European treaties."@en1
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