Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-21-Speech-3-168"
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"en.20091021.9.3-168"2
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"Mr President, Mrs Malmström, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching the time when the Treaty of Lisbon will finally be ratified and we are now beginning to consider how the treaty should be implemented. We all know that the constitution must be turned into reality, which is just as important as the written words in a constitution or in a primary law, such as the treaty.
Therefore, I would like to remind everyone once again about the original intention, because our current discussions about the External Action Service, the High Representative and the Vice-President of the Commission represent one result of the Constitutional Convention, which was taken over by the intergovernmental conference for the Treaty of Lisbon.
The intention was to make the European Union more efficient by moving towards a situation where Europe speaks to the world with a single voice. This is why we need this new type of High Representative and Vice-President, who must have a reliable service so that he or she can do justice to this task.
The second principle of the Constitutional Convention was transparency and the third was democracy. These were the three starting points and it was clear to the parliamentary majority of the Constitutional Convention, which was made up in particular of national members of parliament, that the European Union is always better in areas where it acts according to the community method and is always relatively poor in areas where it acts according to the intergovernmental method.
In line with the spirit of these preparations, the implementation of the treaty must not lead to a strengthening of the intergovernmental approach with the result that the community method, which is democratically controllable, more successful and more transparent, is suppressed.
Therefore, I sometimes do not understand why the Member States are primarily interested in organigrams, but not in how these principles are put into practice. We are of the opinion that we do not need a new bureaucracy located in the middle between the Council and the Commission which, in the long term, would consist of 6 000 to 8 000 people, would lead a life of its own and would become an independent kingdom outside our control.
Let us assume that this service will be assigned to the Commission as an administrative body and let us recognise that it must have a
character. It cannot be a normal office of the Commission, because in the area of foreign and security policy, the authority is divided between the Community and the Council. Therefore, we must ensure that there is a safeguard in place for the Council so that its rights can be expressed in a reasonable way and so that a loyal approach is taken.
It is important to emphasise that the national experts in the Commission must be treated in a different way than was previously the case; in other words, they must be given equal rights. It must be made clear that Parliament’s scrutiny and budget rights must in no way be restricted, but instead should be strengthened.
Therefore, I would like to remind the Commission at this point in the debate that we not only have the right of consultation, but also that we parliamentarians have forced the Commission to give its consent. We will not leave the Commission and the High Representative out of the hearings. We must ensure that, in the case of changes relating to staff regulations and financial regulations, the European Parliament has the right of codecision in the same way as in the budget procedure. Therefore, I would like to invite the two institutions to describe in their declarations the way in which the principles of efficiency, transparency and democracy can be combined with one another. This is not clear to me from the earlier COREPER documents which I had access to."@en1
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