Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-06-14-Speech-3-010"
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"en.20060614.2.3-010"2
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"Mr President, thank you for giving me the opportunity, one year after the French and Dutch ‘No’ votes and only one day before the European Council, to answer Mr Leinen’s question. It also gives me the opportunity to outline the Commission’s position on the period of reflection and on the constitutional process. I partly replied to that question last month, when I presented this Chamber with the Commission’s two communications to the European Council – the assessment of the reflection period and Plan D – and the Citizens’ Agenda, to deliver results for Europe. As President Barroso has already outlined, we have set a Citizens’ Agenda with these concrete projects and the things we want to achieve.
As you pointed out in your motion for a resolution, we need a special focus in Plan D for the coming year, until the June 2007 Summit. I have already promised the Commission to come back after this Summit with a kind of mid-term review. I will pay close attention to the Summit’s conclusions in that review, and also to the resolution of this House.
Delivering concrete results and reconnecting with European citizens will create the favourable climate that is necessary for successful institutional reforms; that is the way we motivate it. So far, Plan D has been a successful exercise in terms of setting off a wide range of activities, and I believe we have started to think and reason somewhat differently. We focus on what is our reality of today and for the future, how we need to interact with today’s and tomorrow’s citizens. Over 660 activities have been taking place in Member States; hundreds of thousands of citizens have visited the Europe debate website.
For the future, I also think, as Mr Leinen does, that we need more of a citizen-to-citizen approach to allow citizens to meet across borders to discuss the European agenda. We should focus particularly on young people, the Europeans of tomorrow, and mobilise more women in the decision-making process. We need the whole of the European project to be more participatory, more transparent and more effective, and this ambition goes beyond any period of reflection. That is the only way we will be able to take the European Union into the future.
Before I come to the next steps to be taken, let me say this about the first steps. The Commission, as you have already heard, remains wholly committed to the principles, the values and the efficiency gains that the Constitutional Treaty would bring. We also welcome further ratifications, as from the Estonian Parliament recently, and as we have heard being announced from the incoming Finnish Presidency.
I would also like to reply to Mr Leinen’s question and proposal to look at the effects of a ‘No’ to the Constitution or no Constitutional Treaty, and we are fully willing to do so. I think we should look at what would be the consequences and the costs of no Constitution at all. We cannot ignore the fact that right now we have no consensus, no common position among Member States on the fate of the Constitution and the institutional reform that we need so much. We cannot allow ourselves to be paralysed by this, and we are not doing so, as you have already heard.
To begin with, the Commission intends to implement the ambitious policy-driven agenda to address citizens’ expectations and restore public confidence in the European project. After President Barroso’s outline, there can be no doubt about our determination. We shall deliver, and we will have to do that on the basis of the current treaties. We cannot afford to wait for what will shortly be 27 Member States to reach a consensus on the constitutional issue.
At the same time, the Commission remains fully committed to debating and engaging in dialogue with citizens at European, national and regional levels. The methods we will use are set out in Plan D – as in Debate, Dialogue and Democracy. We should use that to explain the added value of the European project. We should use that to argue why we need a new Constitutional Treaty. We should use it to discuss the political priorities with citizens.
Our two institutions may not always agree on every detail, but there is one fundamental belief that we share: our commitment to becoming a more democratic, transparent and effective Union. And that goes beyond any period of reflection.
I also believe that European affairs suffer from a participatory deficit. Still, citizens have high expectations on delivery and policy content, and this places important demands on the Member States and on our institutions. We must involve citizens more in the policy process at all levels, particularly young people and women. Such initiatives should be concrete and seen as a permanent function of developing European affairs, and they should ensure that the feedback process is taken seriously – what do we do with what we hear in dialogue and engagement with citizens? – and that listening is followed up by concrete actions.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Plan D is not a rescue operation for the Constitution. It is not limited to the reflection period – be it one year, two years or even more. It is a starting point for a long-term democratic reform process. We want to create a citizens’ ownership of EU policies to make them understandable and relevant, and to make EU institutions accountable to and reliable for those they serve.
I see and hear of lot of nostalgic harking back to the good old days of the European Union, but nowadays it is no good having a few men shut themselves away in a castle somewhere trying to solve the problems of the European Union. Today we need to engage citizens; we need the support and trust of citizens and the confidence of citizens to be able to build a future for the European Union. We need to engage and create the participatory functioning of the EU institutions."@en1
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