Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-09-15-Speech-3-129"
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"en.19990915.9.3-129"2
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"Mr Prodi spoke of the Commission as if it were a real government. Mr Poettering, on behalf of the PPE, welcomed this drift in direction. For our part, we condemn it resolutely.
What, in fact is Mr Prodi asking for? Ever greater powers, ever more areas of competence for the Commission, that is to say, ever greater centralisation and ever more regulation. Mr Prodi is, in fact, recommending continuing and amplifying the drift in direction which resulted in the proliferation of irregularities and fraud denounced by the Committee of Independent Experts and which was behind the resignation of the Santer Commission.
Far from proposing to correct this drift in the direction of the institution, far from refocusing the Commission on the limited tasks allocated to it by the Treaties and on the organisational strictness with which it should acquit itself, Mr Prodi’s attitude conforms completely to the customary approach of perpetually exceeding the areas of competence enshrined in the Treaties to the advantage of the Commission. Worse than this, he is proposing, like Delors before him, to accentuate this divergence. This is the first reason for our refusal to vote in favour of a Commission which defines its objectives with scant regard for the Treaties.
The second reason for our vote against is related to a number of worrying statements made by the Commissioners-designate during the hearings before the European Parliament. What Mr Prodi and some others complacently presented as a model democratic exercise (Mr Prodi even spoke of an impressive exercise in democracy) was in fact a great bout of mutual congratulation on Federalist one-upmanship. A number of candidate Commissioners – and the prize in this respect surely goes to Commissioner-designate Barnier – blithely disregarded the Treaties in order to recommend, firstly the general application of co-decision (in particular, Mr Fischler), then the development of a European constitution intended to replace that of the Member States, then the replacement of national sovereignty by “European sovereignty” (sic).
Are we dreaming here? These calls to free ourselves from the institutional balance decided by the governments of our states, these undertakings in favour of permanent institutional instability, to the benefit of supranational European bodies and to the detriment of national democracies, are grounds for serious concern. It is not healthy for democracy for these hearings to have been twisted into massive schemes of political blackmail, with the Commission and Parliament undertaking to back each other up in their insatiable thirst for power, subverting the frameworks established by the national governments elected by the people of our states. We cannot sanction such drifts in direction."@en1
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