Altiero Spinelli fonds - European University Institute

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Jonker meer voorbeelden te noemen - zo moet het ook mogelijk zijn dat wij een Europese Unie tot stand brengen in moeilijke tijden, want de historie in Europa heeft aangetoond dat er in moeilijke tijden toch nog wel eens beslissende stappen gezet kunnen worden. Mijnheer de Voorzitter, deze resolutie wordt vandaag krachtens artikel 47 van het Reglement ingediend. Wij achten het niet noodzakelijk dat de bevoegde commissies deze meteen in behandeling nemen, wij laten die graag wat rusten, om daarna eens tegen midden 1983 na te gaan welke vooruitgang is geboekt door de drie voorzitters met de voorbereiding van die nieuwe Messina-conferentie. Wat we vandaag doen, mijnheer de Voorzitter, is de drie voorzitters houden aan hun woord. Dit is het begin van een parlementaire contrale op deze zaak. Ik hoop dat het ook het einde zal zijn. Eén ding is duidelijk : wij vragen die voorzitters om nu eindelijk eens te doen wat zij gezegd hebben. Wij kunnen niet langer wachten en zij kunnen rekenen op de steun van dit Parlement. (Applaus) President. - I call Mr Jackson. Mr C. Jackson. - Mr President, may I add my thanks to our rapporteur for his absolutely exemplary work on our behalf. The treaties which have served us all well for 25 years or more are in some respects now creaking at the seams, while in other respects politica! will in the Member States has by no means been sufficient to ensure adequate progress in the provisions they contain. It took after all over 20 years to get this Parliament elected, and virtually no progress has been made on certain policies, such as transport, which were clearly envisaged back in 1957. What, indeed, has happened to the single seat of the institutions? That is why I was one of the first participants in the 'Crocodile Club', and why I wholeheartedly supported the efforts to get this House to show a clear way forward to European union. My first point is that we must aim to build a Community of strictly limited functions but of equally real powers. Many things about Europe, about this Parliament and about European union are profoundly misunderstood in my own country, and indeed throughout the Community. That is why I am particularly pleased that the 'principle of subsidiarity', the inclusion of which I indeed proposed to the rapporteur, appears so strongly in our report. Those in all our countries who distrust 69 progress towards European union should mark paragraph 6 well. It states clearly that ·'the union shall only undertake those tasks which are executed more effectively in common than by Member States separately'. The great importance of this principle is that it provides a logical basis for widespread discussion of the Community's functions. It is possible to define, to argue over, to assess which functions the Community can really carry out better than the Member States individually. Now I am, in one sense, a minimalist for the Community and for every other level of government, be it local or national. I want decisions and decision-making to be kept as close to the people as possible, only raising them to a more remote level - a county, or a state, or European level - if there is real advantage to the people in doing this. But it is no contradiction that I want to build a Community of real powers, more than at present, but of functions, of course, limited to those matters which the Community can perform better than the Member States. This 'principle of subsidiarity', however, has its problems. It is quite clear to me that we should not transfer powers from Member States to the Community until we have institutions that can operate those powers to the benefit of European citizens. It is for this reason that institutional reform is of vital importance- otherwise we shall get caught in the Community's 'Catch 22'. The Community's Catch 22 is that governments may deny the Community functions it should perform on the grounds that the institutions do not work well enough, while at the same time denying institutional reform because we do not yet have the functions which make such reform imperative. My second point is that we should aim both to draft a new treaty and to propose small amendments to the existing treaty. I am convinced that the most prudent course will be to carry forward extremely limited amendments to the existing treaty. But equally, I am sure we must produce among our papers the structure of a new draft treaty for use in future years. W e must be realistic, but we must take the freedom we need to build on what our founding fathers did with such success and thus provide a framework that can last the Community for at least the next 50 years. HAEU AHUE HAEU AHUE My third point is that debate outside this Chamber is all-important. It is all very well for this Parliament to put up a draft treaty, to draft amendments, but we all know that any treaty amend- 43 70
44 Jackson ments will have to run the gauntlet of the parliaments of ali the Member States and that failure in any one of them means no treaty amendments. It is because of this that I have set down an amendment to the resolution which emphasizes the need to encourage informed debate in the Member States and to take evidence. We shall not succeed in our ambitious aims unless there is informed debate which leads the politica! and intellectual forces in our Member States to support us and thus to carry a majority in national parliaments. Our contribution to this debate must be substantial but I hope - if I may say this en passant - we shall not feel any compunction in borrowing from the practice of the British House of Lords in taking oral and written evidence from the finest experts we can find, and then publishing this as a basis for further discussion. My fourth point is a more difficult one. It is that we should continue to use our unwritten constitution as a basis for progress. It struck me a t the time of the farm-price majority vote that no one should understand better what was going on constitutionally than the British themselves. I dare say no one is more familiar with un.written constitutions than we are. And so far as majority voting is concerned, we all know that the Treaty says one thing, that our informai practice in the Community, our unwritten constitution, half stated in the Luxembourg disagreement, says another. And we ali know, too, that it is a feature of unwritten constitutions that, put under enough strain, they shift like a river going round an obstacle. I hope that in this case our unwritten constitution has shifted to a much greater and more constructive use of the majority vote. The fact is, that we already have a large number of non-treaty working practices, from foreign policy cooperation downwards and I put it to this House, pragmatically, that this may be no bad thing. It gives suspicious and reluctant Member States a chance to try things out without entering into a commitment which could be politically impossible at first but which, given time and the evidence of success, may prove perfectly acceptable later on. So I believe we should encourage experiments, inter-institutional agreements, such as those proposed in the Hansch report ; agreements between Member States, and then later, include them in treaty amendments after they have been tried, perhaps amended, and found successful. Mr President, at the same time I confirm that certain treaty changes are vital right now. Surely we have learnt what the Americans learnt 200 years ago, that the advantages of a confederai 7 1 approach, are outweighed by the disadvantages? The fact is that we do need, as Winston Churchill said just after the war, a 'kind of United States of Europe' - our own kind, but a union nonetheless. My fifth, and final point, is this: our European Community, with its 270 million peoples, its annua! income greater than that of the USA, its enormous intellectual and human riches, is a giant in the world. Yet we all know it is a giant so restricted, so shackled by nationalism that it cannot give its people or the world the benefits it should bring. Beyond everything else, then, this report is about creating a constitutional framework that can carry Europe forward for the next 50 years, that can, in effect, cut loose the shackles binding our Community. We vote on our resolution today and I hope it will be carried overwhelmingly : but, at the same time we are asking people throughout the European Community to help us with the task of building European union. For without their help all our efforts will come to nothing. (Applause) President. - I call Mr de Pasquale. De Pasquale. - Signor Presidente, onorevoli colleghi, i comunisti italiani danno il loro pieno appoggio alla proposta di risoluzione presentata dalla commissione istituzionale e illustrata dall'onorevole Spinelli, che anche noi vivamente ringraziamo. Dopo aver approvato tale risoluzione, il Parlamento europeo dovrà affrontare il lavoro più delicato, più difficile e più impegnativo di questa prima legislatura a suffragio diretto. Siamo perfettamente consapevoli delle difficoltà e dei pericoli insiti in questa seconda fase del nostro lavoro, nella quale dovranno essere precisati con la massima ponderazione i compiti dell'Unione, le competenze e le strutture delle sue istituzioni, le procedure adatte a garantire coerenza e armonia nuove nel complesso rapporto tra la Comunità e gli Stati sovrani che la compongono. HAEU AHUE HAEU AHUE Non è quindi il caso di avventurarsi oggi nell'esame delle scelte di merito che dovranno essere compiute a cominciare da domani, nelle fasi successive fino all'atto conclusivo. È bene, anzi, rispettare le tappe previste, anche perché esse servono - come si è visto - attraverso una discussione ordinata e non convulsa, a dissipare equivoci, ad avvicinare posizioni e a far maturare intese non formali. Oggi come oggi, l'Assemblea è invece chiamata ad approvare - o a disapprovare, 72
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Altiero Spinelli fonds - European University Institute

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