Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-06-Speech-3-439"
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"en.20090506.41.3-439"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, European integration occasionally provides us with symbols that move anonymous actors such as we. The last vote of the parliamentary term will therefore be on the last amendment that was jointly proposed by MEPs and national MPs before the European Convention: the creation of a citizens’ initiative at European Union level.
Let us not under-estimate its significance. The Treaty of Lisbon gives the citizens themselves, the ordinary citizens, the same power of political initiative within the European Union as our own Parliament. Our owninitiative reports allow us to invite the Commission to act, to propose a legal basis to us in order to launch a new policy or to adapt an existing one. Well, the citizens will now be able to do the same, if there are enough of them and if they come from a significant number of Member States.
I congratulate Mrs Kaufmann on the way she has worked to find the consensus that was obviously needed on an issue such as this. The clarifications that she has brought to the treaty and the procedural guarantees are reasonable. Setting the significant number at a quarter of the Member States is consistent with the solution adopted for the governments themselves in the framework of the area of freedom, security and justice.
This new right thus given to European citizens exists in none of our countries in this form. The Union will thus be ensuring that steps are taken towards direct democracy. Not even in France, for example, do we dare to go so far. We reformed our national Constitution last year but restricted this same right of collective petition to the local level only.
Let us now hope that our political parties compete imaginatively to make the best use of this new right and, above all, beyond the parties, let us hope that civil society takes a hold of it: unions, non-governmental organisations, students – especially those with Erasmus grants – cross-border workers, all the European citizens living in a country other than their own and who find that the laws that we adopt here are, unfortunately, badly applied on the ground.
In this Union of free movement, the only remaining barriers are those of our political debates. Once again, unfortunately, there is no European election campaign beginning, but 27 national campaigns based on a European pretext.
The economic area exists, the single currency exists, the single European sky exists, but the single political area has yet to be created. This is the real challenge for the Treaty of Lisbon and this is certainly one of the provisions that will make the biggest contribution to meeting that challenge."@en1
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