Brussels, 17/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the European Parliament's extraordinary session on 17 December, Guy Verhofstadt outlined a positive balance sheet for the Laeken European Council and the six months of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council which had been "bouleversé" (turned upside down) by the 11 September attacks. Most important of all was the Laeken Declaration by means of which for the first time "we launched a constitutional process" and decided to make "a new Europe", asserted the Belgian Prime Minister, insisting that if the Convention were to draft a good final report, the IGC would have to take account of it. If the Convection is a success, he said, this method would become a "definitive acquis" for future reforms. He welcomed the fact that his draft Laeken Declaration had been reworked and finetuned but the essential elements had not been changed.
Mr Verhofstadt also mentioned 1) the situation in the Middle East, announcing that on Wednesday, along with Javier Solana, he would be meeting the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell; 2) CSDP: After "progress" with Turkey, he felt that an agreement with Greece was also within reach. He said that the CSDP had become operational and the EU could now lead crisis management operations even if on only a limited scale to begin with; 3) the anti-globalisation protests, saying that despite the presence of 80,000 protestors in Brussels on Thursday, there had been very few incidents due to the discreet and unprovocative police presence but there had been a hard, rapid intervention once a certain threshold had been reached. He added that they had taken other anti-globalisation activists seriously, had discussed with them and even learned things from them. The black list of conflict - Seattle, Nice, Gothenburg and Genoa - has ended. 4) the headquarters of the agencies. I had drafted a balanced proposal that two Member States could not agree with. I did not want to launch new negotiations in search of a botched compromise, explained Mr Verhofstadt.
Summing up, the Belgian Prime Minister hoped that with the Laeken Declaration he had played his part in carrying out the "dream" of a "European super power" with "diversity" and "cultural wealth", which he saw as the most "important political dream" of our epoch. Concluding the balance sheet of the Belgian Presidency, Guy Verhofstadt noted that co-ordination between the Council and Parliament had worked in an excellent manner.
Romano Prodi: the Convention marks a "deliberate break" with the past
The President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, also saw the Laeken Declaration as a great step towards the Europe we want, that citizens can finally start identifying with. He said the Convention was a deliberate break with the past and must operate "in full light of day", with the Commission working as guarantor of the Treaties and carrier of the Community spirit. He felt it was important not to underestimate the fact that for the first time, candidate countries had been involved in such an institutional process since it was a question of their future too and not only ours. Mr Prodi stressed the importance of the stakes - in the epoch of globalisation, Europe has to be able to show that it can make progress with integration and enlargement without the danger of citizens rejecting the achievements. He said that the IGC would finish its work in 2004 at the latest, but "probably before then". (The Laeken Declaration does not mention a date.) On the failure to decide on the headquarters of the Agencies, he said that it was not a disaster but was a further demonstration that unanimous voting is a barrier to progress and citizens can no longer stand this type of horsetrading. What citizens want, he said, was for the European Food Authority to be set up, adding that the Authority would start work on 1 January in its provisional (he repeated the word provisional) headquarters - Brussels.
All the political groups approved the adoption and the substance of the Laeken Declaration (with various nuances of course) and welcomed the prospect of the Convention. The President of the EPP group, Hans-Gert Pöttering (EPP) thanked the Belgian Presidency whose success had demonstrated that the government of a small country can sometimes achieve much more for European integration than the government of a big country. He called for the debate to be "parliamentarised" and called on the EP's various political groups, like the various governments, to send high quality representatives to the Convention. On behalf of the Socialists, Enrique Baron Crespo welcomed the fact that we now had the prospect of a Constitution.
"What is important, is that a constructive dynamic is being created in this Convention", he stressed (for the remarks of both group presidents, see the following article). Pat Cox, speaking for the Liberal Group, placed emphasis on the "very dramatic change of mood" in Parliament compared to the disappointment that reigned after the Nice Treaty. However, he warned, one must not confuse "atmosphere and substance". He stressed that full attention should now be given to the work of the Convention. Pat Cox also took the opportunity of his speech to congratulate Guy Verhofstadt, who was "more present in the European Parliament than his predecessors".
Speaking on behalf of the Greens, Paul Lannoye appreciated in the Laeken Declaration "an important step along the road to a more transparent, more intelligible, more effective and stronger European Union on the international scene". He regretted that there were no women in the "triumvirat" that is to chair the Convention, and would have liked the European Council Conclusions to send a critical message to the United States regarding withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the blocking of work on bacteriological weapons. Francis Wurtz (GUE-NGL) approves "anything that can help the debate on the future of Europe" but regrets that no questions on "the European political project" had been included in the Laeken Declaration. "It is not by breaking the thermometer that you can bring the fever down", he stressed, calling for the Convention to give closer examination to the social question in its broadest possible sense, with the role of the euro and the European Central Bank, but also the taxation of capital, and services of general interest … Francis Wurtz also called on the civil society to invest constructively in this new forum, the Convention, without taboo.