Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-204"
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"en.20080707.21.1-204"2
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".
Mr President, the debate we are currently holding is surreal. Indeed, it is every bit as absurd as a Kafkaesque trial. I shall have to run through the course of events to explain why I permit myself this comparison, as I realise it is rather crude.
On 27 May a meeting of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs considered a draft report that sought to make it more difficult to form political groups. Mr Corbett, the rapporteur for the report, wanted to raise the number of members from 20 to 30, and at the same time require that the group represent a quarter of the countries as against a fifth up to then. This draft report was rejected, which in any other context would mean the report being taken off the agenda. Instead, however, the committee chair, Mr Leinen, allowed the committee to continue voting on amendments to the original text of the report – and this despite there being no report to amend! This manoeuvre made it possible to keep alive a report that was in fact dead. All the rules and customary procedures may have been violated, but this does not seem to worry Mr Corbett, flanked by the committee chair. We need to ask why. After all, in 2004 the threshold was raised on the grounds that the European Parliament now consisted of 25 countries instead of 15. Two more countries have joined since then, but this does not justify amending the rules so drastically. They say that, in many cases, the threshold is higher in national parliaments, but what they forget to say is that the European Parliament has an additional restriction – a geographical restriction. To my knowledge, no such restriction exists in any national parliament. Why, then, this drastic amendment of the rules on the formation of political groups? It most closely resembles an unholy alliance between the two major groups in Parliament to create a two-party system. Indeed, if I were paranoid, I would say that it resembled an unholy alliance with a sinister ulterior motive, one consisting in making it very difficult to create political groups belonging to the opposition; groups such as the one to which I myself belong. Parliament has no right to judge political opinions. Only the voters have such a right. Members elected in the course of lawful democratic elections are legitimate participants in the political process. They have every right to play on this ground, and it is not for either the Socialist Group in the European Parliament or the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats to make it difficult for them to exercise their mandate.
I would recommend that all Members vote against amendments to non-existent reports. This would be my recommendation both today and in the future. This is quite simply going too far if we ever want to be taken seriously as a legislative assembly."@en1
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