Mr President, the Treaty of Nice tends to be marketed as an enlargement treaty. I do not believe that this is correct. This is because the institutional issues involved in the enlargement are not resolved by the Treaty of Nice. Moreover, most of what was decided in Nice has nothing to do with enlargement. As pointed out in the report, the seats in the European Parliament must be redistributed since there is direct discrimination against Hungary and the Czech Republic. This can be changed in the accession Treaties, just as these matters can be regulated in general in the accession Treaties as they were, for example, in the cases of Sweden, Austria and Finland when we joined the European Union. The Treaty of Nice is actually in the main about something else. It is about the power of the large EU countries being strengthened at the expense of the small countries. All the candidate countries except Poland are therefore also losers, because they will be small countries in the European Union. The decision-making process in the Council of Ministers will become more complicated, not simpler. The second main feature of the Treaty of Nice is the increasing move towards a superstate and the disappearance of the right of veto in more areas. There are also some clearly federalist elements, for example, as regards the support of European political parties and a new process for appointing the European Commission, which will mean that the Commission will increasingly resemble a government with a prime minister. The real significance of the Treaty of Nice is thus that an enlarged Union will be dominated by the same large countries as dominate today’s European Union and that the march towards the formation of a federal state in the EU is continuing, even if this development is not progressing as quickly as some in this assembly would like. It is therefore not difficult for my party and for me to vote against both the Treaty of Nice and the report that we are to vote on tomorrow. However, it is important to point out that the report does contain some positive elements. It calls for open meetings of the Council of Ministers. It would have been reasonable for such a decision to have been taken in Nice, that is, to open up the legislative assembly to inspection. Moreover, it calls for a redistribution of seats in the European Parliament, which is an essential democratic requirement. However, we do not believe in the convention method. We cannot really see the point of having a convention in order to draw up the next treaty amendment. However, if in the end we are to have a convention then we believe that it must be a convention for those who decide on the treaty, namely the national parliaments. We hope that the Swedish Presidency and the Swedish government will not move an inch from the idea that it is the national parliaments that must have decision-making rights over the treaties and that it is they who must control developments when the treaties are produced. So what should have been done in Nice instead? Well, we would have liked to have seen a democratisation of the EU, a reduction in the power of civil servants and the Commission, an increase in the power of the national parliaments, increased openness and inspection in the Council of Ministers, a change in the dominance of the free market over environmental aspects and social aspects and a re-examination of the dogmatic monetarism which forms the basis of monetary union. Now we are instead seeing the social democrat governments starting to fall around the EU. There has been no actual change in the foundation of the EU during the time that we have had a ‘red-green’ dominance in the EU. The opportunity is about to be lost and the EU’s basis has not changed in either a ‘red’ or a ‘green’ direction, which we find regrettable.

Political group: GUE-NGL