Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-16-Speech-2-042"
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"en.20031216.1.2-042"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I think we should subject everything that happened last weekend to a very sober analysis. We may perhaps then come to the conclusion that we have, in recent years, not engaged very seriously with the question of whether the EU can be made both deeper and wider at the same time.
Let me put that question in very graphic terms. The reason why the Convention was so very successful was that this issue was the cement holding the whole thing together. It was because there was a common interest – on the part of the actors, but not on the part of the Member States – and hence it is now important that we give some thought to what really are the common interests of the 25 Member States that will be joined together in this European Union from 1 May onwards. That needs to be analysed in a very matter-of-fact way.
What are the tasks that we have to perform at the European level? What are the tools, what are the procedures, that we need in order to perform them? What kind of financial framework does this Europe need if it is to be able to perform the tasks allotted to it? Only when we have come up with serious answers to these questions will we be in a position to draw the necessary conclusions, and learn the necessary lessons, from what was completed at the weekend, and that means that we also have to ask ourselves whether, at the moment, a deeper EU is perhaps more important than its enlargement over and above the twenty-five – which will mean discussing what a Europe of 25 Member States has in common.
I think we must start by fulfilling the fourth Copenhagen criterion – that was indeed laid down at Copenhagen. We must be able to concentrate on what we have in common. What is within the EU must be made capable of sustaining enlargement. That is the task we have to tackle in the coming year, and with a great deal of commitment, and then we will be able to draw from it the helpful conclusions that we need."@en1
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