Madam President, Commissioner, Minister, the national governments took the decision at the Helsinki Summit to almost double the number of Member States. I believe that is the background to the reform we are calling for now, so as to enable the European Union to handle the enlargement process. Doubling the number of Member States requires far-reaching reform of the working structures and the decision-making procedures in the Union, so that this whole undertaking does not become incapable of acting. The key issue is the transition from unanimity to qualified majority voting. That is the most crucial issue and it must be the yardstick for gauging the success or failure of this Intergovernmental Conference. It is quite clear that when there are 27 Member States, it is no longer going to be possible to reach unanimous decisions. It will either take too long or we will only be able to reach solutions that have a minimal effect. This would not be in the interests of our citizens and our countries. We therefore call for qualified majority voting to become the rule and unanimity the exception. However, I am most disconcerted by the developments at the Intergovernmental Conference, because the message we are getting is that so far, the governments have been unable to reach agreement on a single issue regarding the transition to qualified majority voting. I believe this only goes to show once again, that the Intergovernmental Conference is not the best way to get results, because it is a long time before actual negotiations take place and there is too much waiting around on the starting line. Mr Dimitrakopoulos mentioned flexibility. I believe this is also an important principle where enlargement of the Union is concerned. Twenty-seven countries will not all be able to move at the same speed when it comes to integration. That is why it is so important for some countries to integrate more closely, as we put it, if we want European unification to take place within the confines of the European Union rather than outside them. Remember that the debate on the “hard core” or the federal core was revived again after Helsinki, because some people feared that it will not be possible for unification to proceed within the Union. I ask myself what kind of message this Intergovernmental Conference sends out to our citizens. I feel it must be brought to their attention that the Union will become more democratic, more transparent and more accessible to them. In other words, we also need to offset the democratic deficit. Parliament must be granted codecision rights in all matters where the Council takes majority decisions. We also want to improve our opportunities for supervising the Commission. In fact we have submitted proposals to the effect that the President of the Commission should be able to ask Parliament for a vote of confidence, and that it should also be made a little easier for us to express our lack of confidence in the Commission when we see fit to do so. A Europe of the citizens – to pick up on a theme I touched on before – also goes hand in hand with the Charter of Citizen’s Rights in the Union. We demand that this Charter be incorporated into the Treaty at the end of this year. I would just like to mention that this would also enable the “Europeanisation” of the political debate to take an important step forwards. We want a statute for European parties. After all, politics must take place at European level and not at national level. Many of us believe that European lists may prove helpful at future European elections, so that the debates directly associated with the European elections are not purely concerned with domestic affairs, with the opposition pitted against the government, but are European debates, so that the issues we are most concerned about here on the continent are brought to the fore. The reform of the European Treaties must deliver two things: more efficiency and more democracy. If the European Treaty of Nice succeeds in this, then the prospects are good for achieving stability and also acceptance amongst the citizens in an enlarged European Union. (Applause)

Political group: PSE