Brussels, 18/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - The functioning of the European Union could be "generally improved" even without amending the Treaty, but the reforms negotiated at the IGC are necessary and must be successful in Nice, and it is also necessary to start considering the future of the EU in the longer-term, said Jacques Delors, Monday afternoon before the European Parliament's Constitutional Committee, chaired by Giorgio Napolitano, who had invited him to express his ideas on the wider institutional options for the Europe of tomorrow.
Jacques Delors outlined on this occasion his ideas on the formation of a "Federation of Nation States" at the heart of a future "great Europe" so as to be able to conciliate enlargement and deepening (see "texts of the week" in EUROPE of 15 September), while, over the negotiations underway, he felt that a failure in Nice would not create a "beneficial crisis", were the need to succeed (at the same time, he called not to "make too many illusions on the extension of qualified majority, as the aims of one are not the objections of others"). As for the possibilities that exist without having to modify the Treaty, he cites in particular the example of the Economic and Monetary Union, noting that, if "Monetary Union is here", the European Union "remains to be made": according to him, "the spokesperson for Economic and Monetary Union cannot be the only person, it must be the European Commission President Romano Prodi, the President is not a Commissioner, who, even if he is very competent, has his work cut out". Romano Prodi must be this spokesperson at the same time as Wim Duisenberg, repeated Jacques Delors and, in answering a question from the President of the Socialist group Enrique Baron on the remarks made by members of the ECB Directorate, he said: "When we hear a President of the European Central Bank say that the labour markets have not changed in ten years, its wrong, its suicide for the Euro and an insult to reality". "Each to his field and the cows are well looked after", he added.
EUROPE will return in more detail to the dialogue of the former European Commission President (and former President of the European Parliament Economic and Monetary Committee) with the MEPs