Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, somewhere in Paris, in the care of the Chairman of the Convention, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, is a huge display board which, on the day of the Convention’s last meeting, stood at the front of the conference Chamber. All the members of the Convention affixed their signatures to it, thereby declaring their consent to the Convention’s great draft Constitutional Treaty. Yesterday I asked President Giscard d’Estaing to release this board. My proposal is that it should be displayed in front of the next summit of Heads of State or Government, some of whom have completely forgotten that they sent their own personal representatives to take part in that constitutive process and that the signatures of those representatives attest to their having endorsed the result of the Convention’s deliberations. In addition, this might also make the Heads of State or Government remember what the Convention was and what it achieved. At the present time we have two main problems. The first of these is that the Convention cannot defend its own draft and, with the Convention having completed its work, the European parliaments have lost the only place where they could coordinate their efforts and join forces to defend the parliamentary and democratic dimension of the constitutional provisions. Our second main problem, Mr President-in-Office, is that the Convention was public. The Intergovernmental Conference marks a reversion to those clandestine, discreet and conspiratorial gatherings of our imperial potentates, who presume to develop the European constitution in this feudal manner – a constitution which, by its very nature, is a parliamentary matter. It would therefore be good and seemly if governments were to show due respect to parliaments and to the authors of the draft constitution by ensuring that their deliberations are not governed entirely by one single motive. The Convention had aims. Those aims related, quite simply, to democracy, effectiveness and Europe’s place in the world. What has driven the governments to formulate the 320 proposals of which we here have become aware? Only one motive: more power for the national governments. That is their one and only goal. All 320 proposals have but one common denominator: no more social Europe, no more democracy, no more fundamental civil and other rights, no more parliamentarianism, no more efforts to build an effective EU, but only more power for themselves. Whether that upsets the democratic balance, whether it is an affront to republican principles or disenfranchises parliaments, is of no consequence to them. Anyone who is seriously concerned about this trend might recognise a second motive, namely nationalism. The entire Intergovernmental Conference is imbued with a spirit of nationalism that we no longer want to see in Europe, and this mixture of more power for governments and nationalism represents the greatest danger to our continent. I marvel at the gentle patience of the honourable Members of this House. Every four weeks, we submit a petition in the form of a resolution: ‘Most gracious Intergovernmental Conference, we humbly beg that democracy might exist alongside the power of governments; we plead for fundamental rights, including civil rights; we beseech you to let parliamentarianism exist alongside the power of governments’. But we are not even successful supplicants, for they do not listen to us, and nothing changes. Five months! It took 105 people 16 months to develop a constitution for Europe, but it has taken 25 governments only five months to tear it to shreds. Mr President, thank you for your patience. Perhaps you can help in some way to ensure that this board, which will have historic importance one day, is displayed on the wall in front of the Council. Let it serve as a reminder that the future of Europe is at stake. (Applause)

Political group: Verts-ALE