Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express my very sincere thanks for the initiative the Commission has taken in this constitutional process with the paper before us today. I particularly appreciate the fact that in the key areas the Community method has been adopted as the guiding principle. The issues of the decision-making process, codecision and the extension of qualified majority voting, and the replacement of the Council decision-making process stemming from the Treaty of Nice by the simple dual majority are essential approaches that could lead to improvement. As I only have limited speaking time, I would like to follow up these initial comments with some critical observations concerning the Commission's attempt to have itself legitimated by both Parliament and the Council. I see this as running counter to Montesquieu's division of powers. It creates a confusion of executive and legislative roles, a muddle that is really the opposite of transparency and accountability. It would lead to a marked weakening of Parliament's role, as up to now the Commission has been accountable to Parliament alone, and Parliament alone has been able to dismiss the Commission. The question of accountability remains. The right to dismiss the Commission by a two-thirds majority also remains, but now we are also supposed to elect the President of the Commission by a two-thirds majority! That is a total repudiation of the role of this House – the European Parliament is being emasculated! I regard this as a very difficult situation. I do not know if the Commission will get what it is looking for here, because once it has the same relationship with the Council as it has with Parliament in all these areas, the natural alliance between Parliament and the Commission will cease to exist. That means that we will be losing something without gaining anything, because Parliament in its day-to-day technical work will have to take up the cudgels with both institutions, with the Commission and the Council alike, whereas up to now the Commission and Parliament have been in agreement. It is worth considering the fact that the role of the EU Secretary for foreign affairs, which is viewed positively in the paper, will of course appear in a very different, and rather negative, light in this institutional context. The point is that this will also have another consequence: the European Council has the power to remove the Commission from office, yet the Commission President is a member of the Council. It does not seem the right approach to me to allow the Commission President alone not to take part in such a discussion about possible dismissal. If the European Council is to have an almost parliamentary right of control over the Commission, then the President of the Commission should not be a member of the European Council. That follows as night follows day: he can in no way be a member of the European Council, because how can a body have a right of control and hold someone to account if that person is a member of that body himself? I think that does not seem to work at all. I would therefore urge the Commission to reconsider this very carefully, especially as it is extraordinarily weak on such a key issue. The key issue facing the Convention is whether the Council, in its role as legislator, is a legislative Council, with a second chamber that meets in public. The Commission's response to that is that this proposal should be examined. That is all it says! I would have expected the Commission to formulate a clear position on that point. The fact that it leaves the issue of the legislative Council so unclear and presents the relationship between the European Council and the Commission in such a way seems to point to a weakening both of the rights of Parliament and of transparency in general. That is why I regard this proposal on such a vital issue as being highly questionable.

Political group: PPE-DE