Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-276"
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"en.20040211.11.3-276"2
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"Mr President, I think that both the Commissioner and the rapporteur, Mr Gil-Robles, have expressed the substance of this proposal and Mr Ortuondo Larrea has also given various pieces of information that there is no need for me to repeat.
This is an assent procedure, which means that Parliament has to adopt the decision in order for it to be obligatory and, in this particular case, Parliament has acted quickly, because the letter from the Council requesting the assent is dated 8 January, and tomorrow, 12 February, one month and five days later, Parliament will give its assent. I think that the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market has been exemplary in this respect, because the request was put forward so that we had already appointed Mr Gil-Robles in October, in order that when the Council proposal arrived, we could adopt it quickly. I think this is a good example of interinstitutional agreement between the three institutions, almost
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From the point of view of content, Mr Ortuondo has pointed out the fact that there are insufficient resources. For example, in the case of the
we are talking about EUR 5 000 million, which is only one fifth of the amount needed to cover the damage, which is why Mr Ortuondo stressed the need for an additional European fund.
I would like to discuss other more legal matters, however. Firstly, according to Community law, it is not the Member States who have competence in this field, but the European Union as a whole. The agreed formula is an intelligent one: the Member States signing in the interests of the Community.
We hope that the legal system can be changed so that the European Community itself will be an actual member in order to avoid situations such as this in which particular Member States, such as Austria and Luxembourg, will not be bound by the agreement until 2005. There is also another quite peculiar situation: Denmark is not bound by this decision and it just so happens that it is one of the Member States that is most exposed to this type of accident, due to the extent of its straits. I wonder whether the Danish people are aware that, as a result of this
damage caused in Denmark by this type of incident will not be covered.
I therefore feel that, from now on, although the Commission has acted as swiftly and efficiently as possible, it should initiate progress in this respect. This is not an agreement signed by the Member States in the interests of the Community, but an agreement signed by the European Union in the interests of the whole of the European Union: defending national sovereignty does not benefit the citizens of the European Union, which is what we are concerned with.
This would be a fundamental lesson to learn from this type of agreement. We cannot continue to operate with old instruments from former ages, in which the Member States were acting to defend national interests, when we are dealing with collective interests, such as preserving the environment across the European Union."@en1
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"avant la lettre"1
"opting-out"1
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