Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office, the Intergovernmental Conference is not going well. In my view, the result expected in Brussels at this stage appears to be dreadful. I believe that one of the great capacities of politicians who want to say ‘yes’ is having the courage, when it comes down to it, to say ‘no’ or to refuse to sign. I feel that it is only right that the Presidency, the Commission and everyone involved should try to reach agreement in Brussels. However, if reaching agreement in Brussels means replaying the palaver of the last night in Nice, the Intergovernmental Conference must not end in Brussels. There must be no repeat of Nice! You have heard of ‘Dying for Danzig’; now, the Poles have brought us ‘Dying for Poland’. Mr Prodi said: ‘We are going to die for the budget’. I say: ‘I do not want to die for Brussels’. No one is obliged to die and no one is obliged to sign if it is a poor Intergovernmental Conference. That is the situation. (Applause) I know that the governments usually laugh because this Parliament does not have to say ‘yes’. I know that they say that in the end Parliament will be won over. In fact, even the majority in this Parliament, against a minority, was won over in Nice and said ‘yes’ to Nice, while we said that Nice would make enlargement impossible or that it would be impossible for Europe to function. You, ladies and gentlemen and Mr President-in-Office, can tell them that they will have to see to it that this Constitution is ratified, whether it be by Parliament or through a referendum. Tell them, too, that if the vast majority of us, the Members of the European Parliament, do not agree with what they have signed, we are capable of swinging the referenda towards the ‘no’ vote. We can still be a nuisance even if you do not allow us to make the decision with you. If you do not receive the support of the most European of Europeans, in other words, of this Parliament, you will not receive the support of the people of Europe. You must get that into your head. Therefore, if you revise the Convention’s draft Constitution, if you do not want to talk about the legislative council any more, if you do not want to talk about institutional equality with regard to the budget and to Parliament’s right, if you are unwilling to come up with the double majority, if you want to call into question the definition of the content of Europe as defined in the first part of the Convention’s text, the most European of Europeans will fight against this text. So I say to you that you must not sign, for if you do not reach agreement you must continue to talk. You must talk to the Poles. You must talk to the Spanish. You must talk to my grandmother and to my grandfather and to anyone else. As far as I am concerned, signing before doing this would be a crime against Europe. That is what we will say to the people, and we will try to persuade our governments not to sign in Brussels if the result is not satisfactory and to leave it to the Irish Presidency or the Luxembourg Presidency to finish the job. The fact is that it is never too late to finish but it is sometimes too early. That is what I am afraid of and that is why I say to you that you must trust in Europe and must not sacrifice it to a signature of which you will be ashamed, just as you have been ashamed of Nice. That, after all, is why you launched the Convention. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE