Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-032"
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"en.20030903.2.3-032"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Giscard d'Estaing, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my warm thanks to all the members of the Convention, and to you, Mr Giscard d'Estaing, in particular, for the dedication and intelligence you have shown in the long months of intense work that have distinguished this phase of the constitution-building process. The successful experiment of the Convention has brought a lasting change in the course of democratic life in the European Union. A great job well done and an unhoped-for result.
It would mean splitting the College, where the link with the Member States has been the Commission's driving force for the last 50 years. More progress is therefore needed – and this is not at all incompatible with the need to keep the Intergovernmental Conference brief and bring it to a swift conclusion – to make sure every Member country has a full Commissioner.
At the same time, the present text of the draft Constitution leaves choices open on key points, such as the way the Councils are to work and responsibilities in the field of external relations. The task of the Intergovernmental Conference is to make the work of the institutions more transparent and more effective and to prevent duplication and halfway solutions that may breed future conflicts. This is a matter of facilitation rather than innovation.
Lastly, the Convention did not have time to update the current wording of the Community policies. In some cases, this dates back to the 1950s and has been partly or wholly superseded. It will obviously be difficult to settle all the issues still outstanding, but it is our duty to take a step back from the current political circumstances and give careful, discerning thought to those points where it is still possible to make the changes which are necessary to make the constitutional structure even more capable of meeting the challenges ahead. We do, of course, need to see whether the political will exists. Is there no such will or is it a sense of realism that is inducing us to refrain from tackling these issues and to leave the text as it is? If this is the case, the Commission is, of course, willing to take note of this calmly and realistically, mindful of the fact that very significant progress has, in any case, been made.
Essentially, this has been the case every time the Treaties have been amended. It was true for the Single European Act and for the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties, and it may be true here too, but we must realise that, as happened in those cases, we will need to be ready to cope with further crises and, therefore, to negotiate further changes and adaptations. This may always have been part and parcel of European integration – a mixture of vision and reaction to crises induced by growth. It is the history we have lived through and we know it well, even if there are times when we need to move forward more quickly. This is definitely one of those times.
At all events, if we want to capitalise on our experience and if we genuinely want to draft a Constitution that will last, we must provide for mechanisms that allow decisions to be taken tomorrow where they cannot be taken today. We therefore need – and I am coming to the end but also the final key point of my brief speech – to look at more realistic procedures for amending the Constitution that will allow us to act quickly and effectively where, under pressure of crises – and crises there will inevitably be – the arrangements we are setting out today prove to be insufficient. Indeed, the worst-case scenario would be to find ourselves with inadequate constitutional provisions that, in practice, simply cannot be amended because of the requirement of unanimous agreement among 25 or more Member States.
This is true of unanimous decision-making, which still applies today in many sectors, and it is therefore even more true when it comes to bringing policies up to date, a process which we are unable to tackle now. A Constitution set in stone for all time which could not be relied on to provide the solution to future crises would be the negation of the whole history of European integration. This we must avoid at all costs if we want to perform the historic task entrusted to us responsibly.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in our work, we need to keep a clear vision of the path the Union must continue to follow: peace, freedom and solidarity must continue to be our goals in the day-to-day work of the institutions. To do this, we must give the Union the practical tools to achieve those goals. The Union must speak with a single voice in the world – a strong, authoritative, peaceable voice. Internally and externally, it must be able to uphold the force of law which imposes duties but also protects the individual, safeguarding freedom to act in an ordered, creative society.
Lastly, the Union must have the means to show solidarity. This takes the form of support for the most vulnerable in an inclusive society. It is expressed through joint action to provide assistance in the event of natural disasters. It is based on the duty of mutual defence, in the firm conviction that the defence of each and every Member State is the best way to show that we belong to a single family.
Ladies and gentlemen, a new phase has now started: we must finish off the excellent work of the Convention wisely, resolutely and with courage. Of course, it needs to be brought to a swift conclusion, but, above all, it needs to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The Commission will continue to do its part to help achieve that aim.
The draft prepared by the Convention thus provides the basis – I would say an excellent basis – for drawing up the final version of the Constitution. This is a good thing because, above all, the text has great symbolic value: this is the first time the Union's foundations have been debated in an open, democratic forum representative of the peoples and States of Europe.
Secondly, the draft Constitution resolutely tackles the issues of the institutional balance of powers and the complex nature of the Union. The debate has been intense and thorough, and it has allowed all the fundamental issues put forward to be dealt with coherently, namely: finding a new, more effective way of reconciling the two tracks of European integration, the Community and the intergovernmental; striking a balance between the States' political representation and that of the people, and the resulting roles of Parliament and the Council; devising a way to organise the representation of the Union's general interest and the legitimate interests of the individual Member States. Thirdly and lastly, the Convention has laid the basis for the essential task of bringing the Union's policies up to date.
The Intergovernmental Conference that is to finalise and formalise the work of the Convention is now commencing. I see two extreme standpoints emerging and I believe we need to discuss this frankly. On the one hand, there are those who believe the Convention's draft should be left unaltered because it represents the only compromise possible. Then there are those who would like to throw everything up for discussion again because sovereignty is ultimately vested in the States and the last word should be theirs.
However understandable those standpoints might be, I believe both are open to criticism. From the start – ever since the Commission and Parliament advocated the Convention approach after Nice – we in the Commission have always said that the Intergovernmental Conference should be a short, focused, conclusive phase. This does not mean, however, that it should just be a rubber stamp, because that would deprive the Intergovernmental Conference of its political responsibility. Clearly, this Intergovernmental Conference cannot be compared with any other that has gone before, since it will be working on the basis of the excellent work of the Convention. It still has its primary function, however, which is to allow the Heads of State and Government to exercise their political responsibility and present the definitive text for approval to the institutions and, as Mr Giscard d’Estaing said, the citizens of their Member States.
It therefore involves a new phase of political ownership. That does not, of course, demand a lengthy Intergovernmental Conference, but it does call for a proper period of reflection. Indeed, there are aspects of the draft Constitution that bear clear witness to the fact that the compromise reached is incomplete and that the result achieved to date cannot be the end of the line, as we had originally hoped. Therefore, it is right for the Member States, in whom sovereignty is ultimately vested, to be able to discuss it further in order to see whether there are areas where it can be improved. It is the Commission's duty and responsibility to point out such areas.
As it stands, the draft Constitution still provides for unanimous decision-making in over 50 sectors, including some key areas of the Union’s work. Everyone agrees, moreover, that one of the shortcomings in the current situation is the lack of a proper instrument for coordination of Member States' budgetary policies. However, I wonder how people think such coordination can be achieved if the current power of veto is preserved, and the same applies to indirect and company taxation.
Then there is the key issue of the future balance of powers between the Commission, the Council and Parliament. The draft Constitution proposes a Commission made up in a way that will, in my opinion and the opinion of the College, make the institution representing the Union's general interest less able to do its work effectively and credibly. The solution put forward creates a distinction between Commissioners by creating a second, unnecessarily lesser, category. No people of the Union deserves to be represented by a second-class Commissioner."@en1
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