Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-02-13-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20070213.3.2-015"2
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"Mr President, your experience in this House since direct elections in 1979 has qualified you well and has given you a rare sense of perspective for the post you occupy. I congratulate you on your speech this morning.
Mr President, the years 1914 to 1989 on our continent were a 75-year rage of self-mutilation. This year, with Bulgaria and Romania in our Union, we can put to rest the ghosts of that period. However, the roots of freedom lie in courage. I believe there is a German word ‘
’: you, Chancellor Merkel and President Barroso need to muster the collective courage to take our Union forward as a true democracy, to create what Winston Churchill called in 1945 ‘a wider patriotism’ and a common citizenship for the distraught people of this turbulent and powerful continent.
You have seen the European Union grow from 9 countries in the 1970s to 12 in the 1980s, 15 in the 1990s, 25 and then 27 in this decade, with a queue of countries waiting to join. You have seen the Treaty of Rome supplemented by the Single European Act, the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, and now the draft constitutional treaty, as the common market has been enhanced with a single market, a single currency and policies in justice and home affairs, foreign and security arrangements and now energy.
You have also seen – as have some others of us of more recent vintage – a profound change in what the European Union is all about. It is no longer a Union to guarantee peace and security of food supply, but a Union which has to be capable of meeting the three big challenges we face: rapid world population growth and migration, energy resources and climate change, and internationally organised crime linked to terrorism.
Hitherto, the drive for the building of this Union has come from within. Increasingly, it comes from beyond our borders and the response of our institutions has been uncertain. There is a malaise affecting our Union which has led to squabbling between the Member States, who, in the name of preserving national sovereignty, are too often giving free rein to global anarchy; and squabbling between our institutions, which turns our citizens cold, like different denominations of the church, arguing about substantiation rather than asking why nobody comes to church any more.
Mr Poettering, you have the opportunity to lead this House at a time when it is increasingly becoming the dynamo of European integration. It is increasingly to the European Parliament that Europeans must look: a House resurgent and outspoken, holding the Council and the Member States to account when their action against terrorism rides roughshod over the rights we cherish; forging consensus – which escapes the Commission – on the single market in services or on consumer protection measures; working with national parliaments to scrutinise the executive, ensuring the law is respected.
In short, this House is coming of age. Ideology has surpassed nationality as the main determinant of voting behaviour. It is true that this House does not yet possess a right of initiative or the right to propose the President of the Commission, but neither is now unthinkable and increasingly people believe that both would enhance our Union’s culture of democracy.
Therefore, Mr Poettering, I hope that you will use your two and a half years to grasp the need for reform of this House; to give us a Parliament better equipped to provide such leadership; a House that meets in full session every week; a House that concentrates on profound political choices rather than voting on hundreds of amendments to move semi-colons; a House that uses its new powers of scrutiny to the full to recall and re-examine our laws.
When you were first elected, this Parliament was a consultative assembly, designed to give a pro forma cover to decisions taken by bureaucrats and diplomats. Now it is a cornerstone of our European home. In 13 years of codecision, that one function has developed the organs of this body, and transparency has given oxygen to our bloodstreams.
I should like to say to Chancellor Merkel that codecision is now needed in all areas of policy-making if the checks and balances of democracy are to work at European level. The fact is that the Union makes decisions that are binding on Member States without proper democratic or judicial control, exposing us to censure by the Court of Human Rights or the constitutional courts. We had a close shave when the German Constitutional Court examined the framework decision on the European arrest warrant and came very close to contesting its legitimacy. If the German Government, which blocked the use of the
clause in Article 42 just a few months ago, really wants to promote democracy in Europe, you will recognise the imperative of qualified majority voting in the Council and codecision with the European Parliament as a basis for all law-making, otherwise in your time at the helm you risk looking like the mime artist, Marcel Marceau, appearing to climb a wall but actually going nowhere."@en1
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"Zivilcourage"1
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