Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20080423.2.3-015"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Barroso was on a sales mission the other day in Ireland. He regretted that President Bush had met 16 different Council presidents during his eight years and praised the Lisbon Treaty for establishing a joint president.
We are currently following the battles between candidates for each competing party, from state to state, on television channels until the American president is elected. How will we choose our president? He will not be elected! There is no election campaign to follow on TV; there are no candidates for primary selection; there are no individuals we can vote for. In Europe, we are leaving it to 27 prime ministers to meet behind closed doors and select a politician from the past: a politician like Mr Blair, who cannot be elected any longer in his own country, or the former Austrian Chancellor, who was voted out of his job in Austria and who may be a candidate of compromise for Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy – the three European leaders who will elect the president for all of us.
They will meet privately behind closed doors and appoint the president whom we shall send to the US and Latin America. Our non-elected president will go to China and Russia and criticise their failing democracy. He – there are no plans for a she – can be accompanied by a Commission president, who is not elected either, and a foreign minister, also hand-picked by a super-qualified majority of 20 of the 27 prime ministers in the Lisbon Treaty Union.
Democracy was born in Europe, 2 500 years ago in Greece. How can a Commission president praise a Treaty in which all the executive functions are hand-picked behind closed doors instead of being the result of the voters’ choice? Too many countries have too often sent to Brussels people they wanted to get rid of at home.
Instead of the lack of democracy in the Lisbon Treaty, we should opt for a Europe of democracies and a democratic Europe where the voters elect all the people who will serve the European citizens in negotiations with other countries.
Commissioner Barroso said in Cork that the Lisbon Treaty would bring the EU closer to its citizens. No, it will not! It will erase parliamentary democracy in 49 new areas and give us legislation and representation mainly by people we cannot elect or select. We, the elected, can be heard in foreign policy, but no one needs to listen. We, the elected, can send proposals, via amendments, to the non-elected in the Commission. We, the elected, can vote for or against Commissioner Barroso, if he is reappointed by 20 of the 27 prime ministers. It is not the recipe for democracy we shall represent in a non-democratic world.
Mr President, thank you for allowing the expression of both critical and constructive views for 29 years in this assembly – the least bad institution in the EU. This may be my last debate with the Commission and the Council. After 29 years I will leave this place to my successor, Hanne Dahl, and I will not be a Member during the coming asparagus season in May. Bye, bye, asparagus, Alsace wine, Munster cheese and the monster travelling circus between Strasbourg and Brussels."@en1
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