Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-11-Speech-3-045"
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"Mr President, I thank the honourable Members very much for their many valuable comments and questions.
We need to do more – and we are not the ones asking to dilute the decision we need to take in Copenhagen – but a lot of work needs to be done to get others to move. As I said, I am back from my travels to India and the United States, and am going to China later in this month, and we need leadership agreement to get this going. That is the tough thing with this. It is a global challenge in a world where we do not have the kind of global leadership or decision taking that we have in the European Union. It is therefore much tougher to deliver but, at the same time, we need to do it.
The European Union, as you know, only accounts for 13% of global emissions. We cannot solve this on our own: we also need commitment from others, especially the major emitters, and they are the ones who seem to be raising their hands and saying we want to be outside of the agreement. That is not possible, as we could never then deliver on the 2 °C target.
Finally, during the Swedish Presidency, we will now try to push through the better supervision of the financial market that is needed to get better functioning financial markets for the future.
We will also start discussions that will continue into the Spanish Presidency on competitiveness, on how to get better functioning labour markets, and on how to get out of the crisis once we see clear signs of recovery. This, then, is a balance between learning from the problems we had and creating better-functioning financial markets, but also the discussions and the decisions needed to get better competitiveness and better-functioning labour markets here in Europe.
As someone stated, it has taken quite a while to get 27 Member States to ratify. We have been discussing this treaty for many years, and I am always surprised to find that I then get questions on how quickly we can stop living after that constitution, because I must base my work on the treaties. It has been defined there that the decisive bodies for the Council President are the Prime Ministers and Heads of State of Europe. That is actually what has been put into the treaties.
Added to that, a problem which is obvious to me is that most of the people that are mentioned are current Prime Ministers of different European countries. It is actually a tense matter to portray oneself as a candidate for a job you might not get, sending a signal to the people that you are leaving the country and then coming home again and saying, ‘Well, I am still here!’ I think we should respect that this is a factor when it comes to this issue.
On the High Representative, you will have much more transparency, much more discussion, because that will be part of the Commission, part of a decision taken after hearings inside Parliament. Although, to answer Mr Swoboda, it is clear in the treaty coming into force on 1 December that the High Representative goes directly into his or her new job, but has to be part of the Commission approved by Parliament.
This is, of course, complicated but, just to state the obvious as I said the last time, it was never meant to be the way it has now turned out. This was supposed to already be in place before the Swedish Presidency. It is a much lengthier process than anyone could foresee.
On the issue of balancing, because this is something that I also hear, I have just today had the first round of consultations with my 26 colleagues. The problem is that it is a lot of balancing for only two persons. You mentioned geography and gender, but the number one balancing that I am listening to is between Centre-Left and Centre-Right. There is a lot of balancing to do, and I would have liked more positions to be able to satisfy all the criteria that have been mentioned here. To say the obvious, it is not that we are not trying to find the best possible balance.
As I said, this will be next Thursday at our summit meeting with an early dinner to meet all your requests for as quick a process as possible. That is what we have been trying to do. There were comments on who is taking this decision. It takes a little while just to consult everyone. We are now EU-27. Full consultation with my colleagues involves two days’ work – this is fantastic, but it takes time.
On climate, I agree with Rebecca Harms that Europe is not doing enough. I also want to remind you that we have foreseen a situation where we need to increase our efforts in Europe within legally binding targets, but there is a need for conditionality. This reflects the views of many of my colleagues. They are very precise that, if we should go even further in Europe, we also need the same kind of commitments from other parts of the world.
I welcome country- or nation-based decisions which have gone further. We have many examples of that. My country for instance, Sweden, has taken a national target of a 40% reduction until 2020, and this is true for Germany as well."@en1
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