Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this debate is a first. Never, since the Treaty of Rome, have either the governments or the European institutions thought it useful to reconsider the division of roles within the Union. The report which you are considering today is the result of a real joint effort which goes far beyond the rapporteur himself or the opinion of any political group. It is the culmination of fifteen months of work. The draft adopted by your Committee on Constitutional Affairs has taken on board the principal proposals of the Committee of the Regions and the four committees consulted, plus one hundred and seventy amendments originating from thirty different authors belonging to all groups. We have not attempted to re-write the Treaties, but rather to lay down guidelines for such a re-write, which is necessary. We have done this on the basis of several important policy options. Firstly, we found that the text of the Treaties was drafted by diplomats for their own use, rather like a car being built by mechanics for mechanics only. Our first objective is therefore to bring the text within everybody’s reach, in other words to re-write the Treaties in the spirit of a clearer, shorter and more coherent constitution. Those paragraphs of the Treaties not included in the Constitution would remain applicable but would no longer form part of primary legislation. Secondly, a general framework of competences would be constructed around three categories. First, competence is in principle devolved to the Member States. We are not proposing a list of competences exclusive to the Member States. The fact that this principle of Member States’ competence is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution seems to us to reinforce it. Second, the Union has its own competences. In those areas, it can act alone, as in the case of customs or currency, or it may have primary responsibility, as in the case of the internal market, competition or cohesion policies. Third, and finally, there are shared competences. This will be by far the longest list. The Constitution will have to specify, in each case, the objective and scope of the Union’s action, by applying the principle of subsidiarity. Essentially, we propose to use the existing division between these headings, but with two important political changes. First of all, a distinction is made between political competence and technical competence. This is what is known as the hierarchy of standards. Finally, and most important, primary responsibility for foreign and defence policy on the one hand and for freedom and security aspects on the other is transferred to the Union. As far as these two essential areas are concerned, ten years of applying the Maastricht Treaty have confirmed both the absolute need for joint action and, unfortunately, the inefficacy of the intergovernmental procedures. Thirdly, it seems important to safeguard the possibility of adapting this framework without having to resort to the excessively complicated and exceptional procedure of constitutional review. In order to do this, we propose that a mechanism should be retained, such as Article 308, but that it should be made to work in both directions: transferring competence to the Union or returning it to the Member States in the case of issues for which the national dimension has become predominant once more. Fourthly, in order to arbitrate in cases of conflicting competences, we propose a solution involving the courts rather than the political bodies. The Court of Justice would be transformed into a Constitutional Court, and an emergency procedure would be introduced, allowing a qualified majority of the Council, the European Parliament or the Commission to bring matters before the Court between the time when a European law is finally adopted and the time when it comes into force. Fifthly, and finally, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs spent a long time discussing the problem of the regions and of the other territorial authorities. The compromise text finally adopted invites Member States to make proposals to the Union so as to ensure that their territorial authorities are more involved in the activities of the Union. Mr President, the timetable for Parliament’s work has been particularly well-chosen, because next week the European Convention will be considering the subject. Our resolution will therefore be the first working document of the Convention on this essential subject, and in fact, if truth be told, the only document. If Parliament gives it a large majority, representing the main political groups and all the different countries, that will give our resolution considerable political authority, and for that I should like to thank you. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE