XVIth EPP CONGRESS The EPP: Your Majority in Europe 4 - 5 February 2004 European Parliament BRUSSELS

Speech by EPP Chairman, Mr Wilfried MARTENS to the Sixteenth Congress of the European People’s Party

Thursday, 5 February 2004, Brussels



My dear colleagues,

Thanks to our efforts, to the commitment of the EPP’s 64member parties, to the Prime Ministers, to the Opposition Leaders, to the Members of the European Parliament and to the European Commissioners who make up our political family, we have put the EPP in marching order to win the European elections this coming June. This is the sixth time we have adopted an action programme. It is a programme that places the citizen at the centre of our concerns for the 2004/2009 legislature.

We are calling for a policy that sets out to represent a majority in the wider Europe of 25 Member States. Our proposals are backed by common sense, experience, pragmatism and efficiency, as well as by a sense of solidarity.

For the sixth time in the history of the European Union, voters will be called upon to appoint their European Members of Parliament by direct universal suffrage. In this way European democracy is demonstrating its vitality and firm roots in the political life of our various countries.

However, it is the first time that European elections are being held within a larger reunified Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Baltic, thereby breaking down the divisions created by past wars and the stark era of totalitarian rule.

My dear colleagues, I must tell you of the awe I feel, which we all share, to see a dream come true which no politician would have dared to hope for only twenty years ago. It is the dream of putting an end to the cold war and imposing - in freedom and peace – the values for which our political family was constituted, values to which it has pledged itself since the process of European integration began.

This is our first reason for trusting in the future. When a political force like ours unflaggingly commits itself to noble ideals, it achieves its objectives and advances the cause of world peace and human development. From this reason for hope, from this trust that our commitment is well founded, we must draw the strength we need to overcome any challenges that arise.

Indeed, this sixteenth congress is being held at a particularly sensitive juncture for Europe. While we are ready to push ahead once and for all with uniting the continent and to confirm our place as the leading political power in Europe, at the same time we have, for several weeks now, been uncertain as to how to react to the failure of the European Council in Brussels, whose task had been to conclude the Intergovernmental Conference on the European Constitution.

The Heads of Government parted company without reaching agreement and our responsibility as the leading political power in Europe is to find a solution to this crisis of confidence dividing us, without reneging on our joint determination to push ahead with European unity.

My dear friends, I believe I speak on behalf of the entire Congress when I say that our political family wishes to endow the European Union with a Constitution. We need this Constitution in order to enlighten citizens about the contract binding each Member State, each region and each citizen to the Institutions of the European Union.

In a wider Europe of 25 Member States, which is set to grow even larger in the years to come, the absence of a Constitution, of clear and practical rules for guiding decision-making, and a failure to define our joint objectives, would render our coexistence virtually impracticable.

Since the process of European construction began, the motto has always been Necessity is the Mother of Integration. In this century, where globalisation reigns supreme, in this century where vast geopolitical, demographic and economic superpowers are emerging onto the world scene, a democratic Europe can only stand firm by uniting and speaking with a single voice. The critical threshold of a worldwide power in the 21st century is that of a Europe of 25Member States. Any less and each of our nations will only lose out in the world competitive stakes.

The challenges are changing. Now the greatest risk for Europe’s economies and society is de-industrialisation in the face of Asian competitiveness. We must step up our joint effort in research and technology. Our responsibility towards the world is to play a guiding role in safeguarding the environment, lest, by allowing this deterioration to continue, we leave future generations with a planet which it is no longer fit to live on.

All these arguments, and many others contained in the action programme, plead in favour of averting the crisis and reaching an equitable agreement on the Union’s Constitution.

The Convention’s work and method have been exemplary, because they have allied the most representative measures with a dynamic vision of Europe. This work is so invaluable that it would be a crime for a chance mishap like this to make us abandon the vehicle by the wayside and simply to head off in another direction.

So, on your behalf, I am pleading for an agreement as fast as possible, based mainly on the spirit and prior achievements of the draft Constitution adopted by the Convention. Any attempt or temptation to overcome the current difficulty by resorting to seductive but illusory formulas such as an “à la carte” Europe, a “variable geometry” Europe or a Europe outside the Union’s Institutions, would be a step backward towards simple governmental cooperation.

With more than 50 years of experience, we all know that it is no easy task to build a single Europe. It demands a constant effort to parry national egoism and short-termism. The European ideal is ours because it involves a measure of sublimation and trust that the human race has the ability to make good its mistakes. Therefore nothing would be more fatal to the European ideal than to tackle the coming financial discussions for defining the European Union’s budgetary framework over the coming years in a spirit of defiance. We must not miss the chance to reconcile the imperatives of a European budget which is dynamic yet mutually supportive. It is contradictory to set out to limit the Union’s budget and own resources to 1% of GNP, when new tasks would be more economically and efficiently managed jointly within the Community framework.

My dear colleagues, I would also like to underline our continued attachment to Community principles which, up to now, have guaranteed the Union’s success. We want a strong Commission that is responsible, capable of defining and administering the common interest and yet sufficiently bold and imaginative to take an overall view of European Union governance. We accord such importance to the Commission’s role that we, as underlined by Hans-Gert POETTERING, the Chairman of our parliamentary group EPP-ED, are supporting the call for the European Council to take due account of the results of the June elections before proposing the composition and Presidency of the future Commission.

We reiterate our attachment to the Union as a community based on law, within which each Member State, irrespective of size or power, complies with the Treaties, because trust between us is possible only if the same jointly adopted rules apply to all. We also reiterate our concern to forge closer links with citizens, with those involved in the economic and social reality of building a Single Europe. Each of our parties must undertake to ensure that as many voters as possible participate in the June polls. A low election turnout would favour the extremist vote and be a severe blow for Europe.

Dear friends, we shall not leave it up to the socialists and the Euro-sceptics to build a Single Europe, a cause to which some of our distinguished veterans have been vowed since 1950. The EPP is proud to be the political family of the founding fathers.

Our identity is still bound up with this great European project. Our identity is inextricably linked with an unswerving obligation to guarantee peace at every stage of our political action.

My dear colleagues and friends, I should like to conclude my address by turning to the younger generations represented here today, especially those from the ten new countries which are due to become fully-fledged members of the European Union on 1 May.

I come from a generation which, as children, experienced the violence and injustice of war and the suffering of death and destruction. From the very outset, the founding fathers made it their obligation to create the conditions that make war impossible.

This effort was underpinned by faith in human beings and in their ability to learn from experience and suffering in order to progress. Each and every one of you must fully appreciate the value of this heritage of peace. Barely ten years ago, innocent men and women in Balkan Europe were still perishing as a result of war. Peace is not a right and can never be taken for granted. It has to be nurtured like a well-tended garden. The culture of the European Union is based on compromise, perseverance, patience and tolerance. Our generation is passing this culture on to you. We ask you, in turn, to preserve and enrich it and to pass it on to the generations that succeed you. This is the key to our struggle and the EPP’s political commitment continues to be directed to this end. These, dear friends, are the reasons which, in spite of the inevitable twists and turns of political life, vindicate our joint struggle to win the crucial election next June under the European colours of the EPP.