Mr President, first of all, I wish to thank Jacques, Jacques Delors, and also Altiero Spinelli and Fernand Herman, I wish to thank everyone, from Vaclav Havel to Carlo Ciampi, from Joschka Fischer to Jacques Chirac, from Michel Barnier to Pierre Moscovici, from Chris Patten to Costa Simitis, not to mention Florence and the plethora of current Members of the European Parliament who, since 1999, have carried forward the great movement in favour of an European constitution. My thanks go to everyone from Jo and Giorgio to Iñigo, from Dany to Frassoni, from Richard to Elmar, from Bayrou to Andrew. Thanks to you all, a new idea is gaining ground on the continent of Europe: the idea of a European Constitution. The concept of a constitution is a new idea for Europe, while at the same time a very old idea, dating back to the origins of the modern age and connecting us with the most profound debates on democracy. To the right of us, we have Joseph de Maistre, the counter-revolutionary thinker, who condemned and even scoffed at the idea of a constitution, because a constitution is made – shock, horror! – by man and – surprise, surprise – for man. “But man does not exist”, he said, specifying that he had met many a Spaniard or a Frenchman and even perhaps a Persian, but “I have never met man. If he does exist, it has escaped my notice”. To the left of us, we have Karl Marx, the revolutionary thinker, who condemned and even scoffed at the idea of human rights, because, in his view, the human does not exist in the abstract, and humanity could not constitute anything at all. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, criticisms of these two kinds are still being levelled and, sometimes, there is nothing to separate the two. Nor, sometimes, is there any difference between the crimes and acts of inhumanity committed by men in denial of other persons’ dignity. The lessons we have learnt from the twentieth century, however, is if we see people everywhere only as French, Germans, Danish, Irish, Arabs, Hutus, Tutsis, Serbs, Bosnians and Persians, we end up forgetting our common humanity. Without this fundamental point of reference, at best there is mutual lack of understanding and at worst there is mutual killing. The British and the Irish, the Serbs and the Croats, the Israelis and the Palestinians, the peoples on both sides can only exist if, as a precondition, human beings exist. Taking away their humanity to leave only their nationality is to take away the person. Then they are lost. They cannot accept the other as being the same. All they see is the enemy, and they destroy each other. As you know, the European Community was born out of rejection of this destruction. We have managed to avoid war for fifty-five years! Strasbourg is a place that appreciates the importance of this record. This achievement within the Western half of Europe is something we wish to extend to the whole continent. Enlargement will guarantee this. With peace guaranteed, Western Europe has started to attend to business in search of prosperity. Let us not criticise commercial Europe too much, I speak as a Socialist: it provides greater wealth to all of us. Yet the European Union should not be described as just one large marketplace, it has other purposes as declared in the Treaties: European integration, freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law, fundamental social rights. Peace, prosperity, democracy and justice are values which, each in their own way, virtually all the Members and the groups in Parliament, and the majority of elected representatives and political groups wish to see achieved by Europe and for Europe. Democracy in Europe is in better health. Thirty years ago, great countries in the South of Europe lived under dictatorship, and Eastern Europe was subsisting under the yoke of the Soviet Union. Today, we have just experienced one of the last democratic revolutions in Europe, that of October 2000 in Serbia. We feel sure that, very soon, we will be joined by a democratic Serbia. What better evidence of the European Union than this association between the victory of democracy and entry into the great family of the Community! Democracy in Europe is in good health, but European democracy is in a bad way. One in two European citizens did not vote in the elections of June 1999. It is not something that we are about to forget. One in two of my students does not know who Romano Prodi is, although they are almost all quite clear on Michael Schumacher or Monica Lewinsky. That tells us something about how far politics in general have decayed, and just how distant the European institutions are from the citizens of Europe. Some resign themselves to this state of affairs, and others are delighted at it, but not us. That is why we want to see European democracy being strengthened by a European constitution. What do we actually have right now? We seem to have almost everything, yet in the finally analysis we have nothing. Seven Treaties, hundreds of articles, an impossible tangle of standards, preferences, regulations, procedures, core legislation and secondary legislation. The European Constitution does exist but no one has ever found it. It remains undiscovered, invisible, illegible and unintelligible. We want a proper constitution. Let us at least agree on this objective, and if we do agree, then let us state how to achieve it. Parliament is proposing one route involving two phases, two stops: reorganisation of the Treaties, the fast track, and adoption of a constitution, the gradual track. The report proposes these two phases as commitments that should be entered into at Nice, because it is possible. It also states that before being completed, there should be a European referendum, because it is a dream which we need. At all events, do not kill it off today. If we want to achieve it, then we can, all together, citizens, Members of Parliament, and governments of the European Union. Today, the 24 October 2000, in Strasbourg, the European Parliament is stating one simple message loudly and clearly: the European Constitution is something you can achieve and something that we indeed want. (Applause)

Political group: PSE