Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-07-Speech-4-021"
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"en.20070607.3.4-021"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it cannot be stressed too emphatically that this summit will determine whether the European Union possesses the political capacity and the conjoined strength to adapt the fundamentals of the treaties, which now apply to 27 Member States, to the growing demands of a globalised world, or whether it will fail to meet this challenge and keep on energetically running on the spot. The Barón Crespo/Brok report testifies to efforts to get the timetable for the adoption of the Treaty itself adopted, and this House firmly endorses these. Those few Member States whose consent is at present still a cause of contention should therefore perhaps consider whether they are jeopardising the consolidation of the Community, and doing it for the sake of very obvious and selfish interests. Europe must not allow itself to sink into this sort of small-minded swamp.
All this having been said, it should still be borne in mind that the consent of all Heads of State or Government is required only primarily rather than exclusively, so let us remind ourselves that it was not they who brought the Constitutional Treaty down, but the members of the public who said no. Whether we will gain their approval by rescuing the Treaty from the dangerous corner of the referendum without examining the reasons for their rejection of it, I venture to doubt.
The way my own country is constituted leads me to object to referendums, but I am very definitely in favour of addressing the profound and continuing disquiet about the European Union and getting to grips with it in a pro-active way; for that too, the summit must send out a signal, and to do so is not to square the circle, for dissatisfaction makes itself felt in very definite ways, with reference, for example, to the lack of boundaries both within and without. There must be limits to Europe internally, in its dealings with the Member States; in the internal market, at any rate, we are coming up against the limits of integration, by which I mean the limits of what the public are prepared to accept by way of European rules and regulations, and the Commission is not least among those who transgress those boundaries to integration, occasionally deliberately and without any feel for subsidiarity.
We need the structure of a new Treaty. Those who bar the way to this revision of the Treaties out of self-interest and small-mindedness lay themselves open to the question as to whether they really belong in this Community, and we will not fight shy of asking them.
Let us not forget, though, that, while the Treaty requires the consent of the Heads of State or Government, Europe also needs a ‘yes’ from its citizens."@en1
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