Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-306"
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"en.20030408.10.2-306"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are on the eve of the European Union's greatest political project – the overcoming of Europe's enforced division into two parts. Tomorrow, we will be deciding on the enlargement of the European Union by the addition of ten new Member States. Despite this success for the European Union, the Eurobarometer published in March 2002 clearly shows that fewer than one-third of the members of the public questioned regarded themselves as well informed about the European Union. Most indicators confirm that a large section of the population – 50% – is completely ignorant of the European Union or indifferent towards it. Voter turnout has fallen from 63% in 1979 to 49% in 1999. There is something not quite right here.
I believe one of our main problems to be the fact that we speak of the European Union as a distant structure. That also came across from what Mr Ilgenfritz said. The European Union is made up of all of us! I do believe that the main cause of our problem is the mental and emotional distance between people, wherever they live, and the European institutions. The political will to make European policy into internal policy is lacking.
The political will to reduce the distance between Europe's citizens and its institutions is absent – not from the European institutions, but from the Member States. Does, for example, every government state that there is no EU competence without the Member States' consent? Are people in the Member States told about how no directive can be enacted without the Member States' consent? Is it being stated openly that enlargement of the European Union cannot go ahead without the European Parliament, the Heads of State and of Government, the Member States and the candidate countries agreeing to it? No: whenever there is any doubt, people are told, ‘Brussels is doing it to us!’
The public do not know about the shared responsibility of the Member States for all European decisions, because this is not lived and communicated. Let me end by asking whether the regional parliaments are performing their task of exercising parliamentary control over their representatives in the Committee of the Regions. No, they are not! Are the national parliaments performing their task of exercising parliamentary control over what the Council does? No, they are not! Is the European Parliament adequately discharging its duties in exercising parliamentary control over the Commission and in working on legislation? Not satisfactorily so! If we do not fully perform our parliamentary functions at regional, national and European level, the connections between them and the interlinked decision-making mechanism cannot be presented in a transparent way. The best public information campaign is of no use if the public are not aware that they, through their governments, have a part in every decision."@en1
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