Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-10-Speech-3-023"
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"en.20071010.16.3-023"2
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".
Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, the representatives of the European Parliament speak a variety of languages and we belong to different groups, but we are united in the same desire, to move the European Union forward by completing the Lisbon Treaty, a treaty that includes legislative codecision, the unique personality of the Union, progress in the communitarisation of internal and justice policy and external policy, and participation by national parliaments.
We want greater democracy and greater efficiency. We regret the fact that there is not more transparency, but this is part of the methods of the Intergovernmental Conference. I have to say that the lawyers – particularly those from Parliament – have enabled us to interpret the hieroglyphics that this exercise has become in a positive way.
I would like to ask the President-in-Office of the Council to confirm to Parliament something that I understand to be a very clear commitment. The citizens, who were very unfairly relegated to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, have returned to the Treaty on European Union with the wording that it had had since the Maastricht Treaty. We see this as fundamental, as representatives of the citizens.
I must acknowledge that, in an unusual gesture of political clarity, the President-in-Office of the Council himself told us that this was impossible, but it has been achieved: the first important achievement.
The second one is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is the symbol of the identity of European citizens. Now it is not a declaration – number 11; neither is it a protocol: it is ‘the Charter’, which we will vote on here next month, formally, with the Presidents of the three Community institutions, before starting the ratification process. The Charter will be legally binding, and I say this because I believe that it is important for it to be recorded today, because I think that these are absolutely essential conditions for the European Parliament
conditions for supporting this treaty.
There are also other elements on which we think progress can be made. My fellow Member Elmar Brok mentioned the subject of data protection, which is a sensitive subject if ever there was one.
There are some other elements that are very important for us. One of them is the dialogue between the social partners – which was unfairly relegated to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – and another important matter that we believe we are helping with through our support for resolution of confidence problems is to provide security through a declaration, like the Ioannina Compromise, which already exists, but should not go any further. We do not think it makes any sense in a Treaty on a Union that functions by majority, and qualified majority, to introduce elements of unanimity that would absolutely destroy the process. I mentioned in Viana do Castelo, as the President will recall, that it makes sense having the atomic bomb if it is not used. If it is used, it destroys everything. And I think that this is an important warning.
Mr President, there is a point that is important to Parliament, and I think that I am speaking on behalf of the majority of Parliament, and the majority of the Member States, and very clearly on behalf of those that ratified the Constitutional Treaty, which we sacrificed in order to achieve unanimity, and on this occasion it is very important for us all to work together in mutual loyalty and solidarity in order to achieve ratification. If not, we would find ourselves in very difficult circumstances. I think that we all need to remain faithful to the commitment that we have made. Thank you very much, Mr President."@en1
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