Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-16-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20060516.4.2-023"2
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"Mr President, I have three points. Firstly, I agree with Mr Kirkhope that the Constitution is alive and kicking and we should be happy about it.
Last week was great: we had the Interparliamentary Forum, the Commission produced a paper, Estonia ratified the Constitution, Finland gave a clear signal that it would ratify and Mrs Merkel gave a great speech. Mr Farage is no longer here, but it was interesting to see that his message to the ‘cricket people’ was that he wants France and the Netherlands to decide for everyone else how the Constitution should be dealt with. It is an interesting message to give to the British people.
My second point, echoing what Mr Méndez de Vigo said, is that we have five phases in this debate. The first phase was reflection, not siesta, as some would have liked to say. Now we are moving to the second phase, which is analysis. The Austrian Presidency needs to move the reflection phase on into a period of analysis and take on board Mr Méndez de Vigo’s excellent idea that there should be a study on the cost of not having a Constitution. Thirdly there will be a proposal phase and, fourthly, a negotiation phase. Finally, much like the Commissioner said, we will hopefully have a ratification phase in 2009.
My final point concerns the blame game. It seems to me, from listening to Parliament’s debate and the public debate, that we are playing a blame game. It appears that the Member States are blaming the European Parliament and the Commission for everything that goes wrong. The Commission has a tendency to blame the Member States, and the European Parliament blames both the Commission and the Member States. We need to get out of this blame game and start looking at this more as a team. The idea of a joint declaration, in which the European Parliament also participates, is a good one.
May I just point out that we are talking about the future of the Union, in preparation for the European Council, and only one group leader is present in this Chamber: Mr Poettering. Mr Schulz is no longer here, but he mentioned meetings of the Council of Ministers, in which each of the 25 Member States is given three minutes to speak, which makes a total of 75 minutes. If you take that example and apply it to our Chamber, with two minutes for each of the 732 MEPS, the total is 1 464 minutes. The debates in the Council are not necessarily sexy, but we could also make improvements in this area.
My final point is directed at the Commissioner. You have just said that it is great that some Member States are ratifying the Treaty. Five have done so since the negative referendum results and a sixth ratification is on its way. I urge you to tell your Prime Minister, Mr Persson, that it would be great if Sweden ratified it as well. This is not a statement in view of the Ice Hockey World Championship. It is a simple statement that Sweden should do it too."@en1
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