Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-20-Speech-3-044"
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"en.20080220.3.3-044"2
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"Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome the report by my colleagues Mr Corbett and Mr Méndez de Vigo, because it is a report that is consistent with what the European Parliament has done from the start.
I am sure that presidents such as Robert Schuman and Paul-Henri Spaak, or Konrad Adenauer would have signed the Lisbon Treaty, above all because the line that was defined based on the Spinelli Treaty, which in the mid-1980s inspired the line that took shape in the Constitution, has now resulted in the Lisbon Treaty, in an open constitutional process for the European Union. In this respect, I think that the report defends and sets out the progress that has been made. At the same time, however, it is a report that forms part of the desire to consolidate the European Union as a political and democratic union.
I would like to make an observation regarding the lessons that we need to learn and, in particular, on the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty. I am hearing a great deal of talk about referendums from those who are against us moving forward. I of course participated in the referendum that we organised in my country and we won. There is a lesson we need to learn: what we decide together cannot be made subject to, cannot be held hostage by, what is decided by a small minority.
We need to think as democrats about how all of us together ratify what we desire. It is not acceptable for us all to be dependent on what a small minority may do, and I think that this is an important lesson for the future.
Mr President, I would like to finish with an observation: the European Parliament has always been in the vanguard, at the forefront of Europe. This means that we now need to get to work on a large number of political decisions that need to be adopted even before the next elections, because the reality is that this Treaty should enter into force on 1 January 2009. From the point of view of democracy, codecision, appointments and adapting the European Parliament, there is a great deal still to be done."@en1
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