Strasbourg, 09/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - At a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday, UDF MEP Jean-Louis Bourlanges, said he would be abstaining from the EP vote to endorse the Accession Treaty, pointing out that if the Constitutional Treaty is not ratified by all 25 countries, it would never see the light of day. He stressed the need for institutional reform to be linked with enlargement again and with deepening of constitutional issues and said the EP should reject the endorsement not to hold back enlargement but to apply very strong pressure to the Convention to get it to unveil a draft Constitution in July, or at least in September, and pressure on Member States to adopt it and ratify it at the same time as the Accession Treaty. Without the enlargement carrot it will be impossible to get institutional reform, he said.
Bourlanges described as a "prostitutional compromise" the agreement between the EP and Council on the budget, whereby the "EP agrees to be raped in exchange for a small sum of money". In terms of the hierarchy of standards, the inter-institutional agreement and Council statement are worth peanuts compared with the Accession Treaty, he said, stressing the real danger of the EU budget procedure in the future being managed by an intergovernmental budget procedure.
Giorgio Napolitano: Jean-Louis Bourlanges is right to sound the alarm button
Jean-Louis Bourlanges' explanations of why he voted against the Accession Treaty "deserve the highest respect" said Giorgio Napolitano (Democratici di sinistra), President of the European Parliament's Constitutional Committee.
Napolitano mentioned the serious violation of the European Parliament's budget rights by the Council (which caused the President of the Budget Committee, Wynn, to abstain), and, more importantly, the danger of complete separation between the end of the EU's enlargement process and the adoption of the Constitution. The Italian MEP said uncertainty about the timetable and content of the Convention's final decisions and even greater uncertainty about the Intergovernmental Conference, acted as wild cards and raised concerns that Bourlanges is right to clearly point out. He said must hope that the alarm bell sounded by Jean-Louis Bourlanges would be welcomed by everyone believing in the need for a larger but also more united, stronger, European Union, not diluted or weakened in its capacity to move further towards political and economic integration.