Madam President, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, four years ago, when I had the honour of presenting the statement on the Treaty of Amsterdam to this Parliament, together with my friend Dimitri Tsatsos, I ended that speech by recalling the words of Miguel de Cervantes who, when old and tired and weary of life, said that there were times when one had to chose between the road or the inn, between moving forward and staying put, and I said: ‘we must chose the road, we must move ahead’. Amsterdam is one more step in that direction. I remember that the Commissioner, our good friend Marcelino Oreja, replied to me with more words from Miguel de Cervantes, telling us of the sorcerers, who can deprive us of everything, but never of our hope. Does the Treaty of Nice, therefore, represent that hope which the European Parliament had put its faith in? The answer is clear: no, it is not what the European Parliament was asking for, because the European Parliament wanted a thoroughgoing reform of the institutions; because the European Parliament wanted to prepare the Union for enlargement; because the European Parliament wanted to deal with the problems of concern to the citizens. The truth, however, is that the governments, which control the agenda at an Intergovernmental Conference, took a different decision and the agenda was, therefore, not the one the European Parliament wanted. The Treaty of Nice has not resolved many of these issues. It has only resolved some of them, satisfactorily in some cases and insufficiently in others. I believe that the merit of this resolution – if it has any – and of this report that Antonio Seguro and myself are presenting, is that it is a balanced document, which reflects that nature of a Parliament which is no longer merely there to provide impetus but is now a co-decision maker. A co-decision-making Parliament means a responsible Parliament and, therefore, a Parliament which has to do things in a balanced way. I would like to pay tribute to all the members of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs who have worked extremely hard to reach a consensus, starting with its Chairman, Giorgio Napoletano, and also my good friend, Antonio Seguro, who has not only been a solid and intelligent contributor, but also an honest one. We are, therefore, talking about a balanced document, in which we explain what we do not like and what we want to see modified in the future, because agreements, and the Treaty of Nice is an agreement, do not last forever – forever is no more than an adverb of time – and are liable to be reformed. The Treaty of Nice itself contains the seed of such a reform. I believe that this resolution looks to the future, towards that Declaration No 23, which lays down the basis for reform. In this constructive spirit, we wanted to help the Swedish Presidency, with which we have had much contact over the last few months, so that this European Council in Gothenburg may show us the future of the European Union through the responses of its institutions. Madam President, we want to see national committees set up in all the Member States so that the people may hold a genuine debate, not a phoney one, and in that way we will discover what the citizens want of Europe in the future. This Parliament also wishes to see the Intergovernmental Conferences prepared by means of a democratic method. We believe that the convention that drafted the Charter on Fundamental Rights should provide the model for this democratic method. Today, when we are seeing so many proposals from different people, all on the convention – which is a positive start – I would say that what the European Parliament wants is a convention based on the model of the convention which drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights: on that one and none other; because that model was shown to be successful and it brought together various authorities in order to achieve the desired result. On the basis of the convention model, we want the result of that convention also to be the role played by the governments in the Intergovernmental Conference. We are going to make constitutional proposals, and we must not be afraid of the term ‘constitutional’ because, when we talk of competences or institutional structure, we are talking about constitutional issues. The result we are seeking is a European Constitution, and I wish to make this completely clear, a European Constitution which makes everybody’s competences absolutely clear and, above all, makes it clear what each institution does within the institutional structure. We want this to be ready before 2004, before the European Parliament elections, so that the political groups in this House can go into these elections defending our choices. Madam President, I believe – and I recall my initial comments – that this is a path of hope. We are facing the Europe of the euro, the Europe of enlargement, and it is up to us whether this is a path of hope or a path which leads us to a situation of stalemate in the European Union, which none of us want to see. I therefore want this resolution to make a constructive contribution to this road of hope becoming ever broader and our becoming ever more European.

Political group: PPE-DE