Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-235"
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"en.20060118.20.3-235"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Madam Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, largely because of the national parliaments, which constituted the largest group in the Convention, it and the Intergovernmental Conference gave the draft constitutional treaty a balanced reception, with fourteen countries ratifying it, two of them by means of a referendum, while two did not. This failure, which had to do not only with national issues but also with the mood in Europe as a whole, represents a failure on the part of national politics, but also of European politics, in that we have not succeeded in justifying Europe.
We have to take the public’s concerns seriously, not least in France and in the Netherlands; we cannot simply disregard them, but should spell out why we need this sort of Europe. That is what the period of reflection needs to be used for; it is not a period for debate on details in the constitution, but a time when Europe must be justified to people.
It has to be clear to us, and we have to make it clear to others, that the constitutional treaty contains things the absence of which the public formerly criticised, such as greater capacity to act in foreign and security policy matters, on which the opinion I have drafted concentrates, and which, according to all opinion surveys, is precisely what the public want. They want Europe to be represented to the outside world, and it is precisely so that it may be that there are rules in the constitution, rules that only it provides for and which we, under present conditions, cannot lay down without it. It creates a new form of subsidiarity involving the national parliaments, thereby making centralisation impossible, and backs up this concept of subsidiarity with solidarity.
Citizens’ rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights have a major part to play in this. This constitution makes the citizens into decision-making actors and also provides them with protection. It must also be clear to us that in future, for example, the President of the Commission, as head of the European executive, will emerge directly from the elections to the European Parliament, with the public having a part to play in that. That is why we should focus on the fact that Parts I and II are the actual constitutional treaty itself, whilst Part III is the Treaty of Nice, about which there have been misunderstandings that we have not been able to eradicate, and so I am grateful to the Austrian Presidency for its willingness to put forward a ‘road map’ and glad that Germany, during its presidency, intends to take new initiatives. We should now concentrate on dialogue, assess the reflection period, and put forward our proposals in 2007. It follows from this that we cannot take action right now, as Mr Duff and Mr Voggenhuber propose; that would be premature and does not reflect what the public wants."@en1
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