By Anne-France White - 23rd March 2007
Ahead of the unveiling of the Berlin Declaration on 25 March, members of the European parliament have spoken out on what they think the text should say.
The declaration is intended to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome by celebrating the achievements of European construction and setting out the policy challenges ahead.
The aim is to breathe new momentum into the European project; but the build-up to the Berlin meeting has seen EU member states squabble over what the text should include- and omit.
The Parliament Magazine asked MEPs to produce their own concise Berlin Declaration for the 26 March issue of the magazine, with more than 40 MEPs expressing a wide array of views on the state of the EU.
Looking back at the EU’s history, several of the declarations express strong praise for the European project, with Max van den Berg arguing that “fifty years of European cooperation has been a success story unprecedented in history”.
The opposite argument is voiced by Roger Helmer, who declares that “the European project has failed”.
One common theme among the dozens of declarations is that Europeans must work together – as Pervenche Bérès puts it, “the most important thing today is to give meaning once again to European collective action”.
Adriana Ticau adds that it is no coincidence that the slogan for the first European elections in 1979 was “Together at last”, and that the word comes back in the EU’s 50th birthday slogan “Together since 1957”.
Several MEPs emphasise that reform is unavoidable if the EU is to continue to work effectively for its citizens.
As Jens-Peter Bonde tells the EU: “you are now fifty, fat and finished – unless you fix your body with reform”.
Many of the MEPs put the emphasis on the great challenges the EU will have to tackle in the coming years – such as energy and climate change.
Glenis Willmott argues that “rising to the challenge of the fight against climate change, both by setting down rough targets and by consulting, encouraging and supporting our citizens in adopting more environmentally-friendly habits, should be at the top of our agenda”.
Pervenche Bérès adds that the EU’s aim should be “the same as 50 years ago: to deal in common with the energy challenge we are all facing”.
MEPs also place international security and terrorism high on the agenda.
“The EU cannot become an island of peace and wealth in a sea of global insecurity, lawlessness, and poverty,” argues Ana Gomes.
Lapo Pistelli says “Europe now has a new mission: to eradicate poverty, war and the suspicion of the others no longer within its own borders but outside”.
Several MEPs also call for more work on the social side, with Ioannis Varvitsiotis saying “we should focus on achieving social cohesion”.
On the divisive topic of enlargement, Mario Borghezio says the declaration should “map out the borders of the EU, and state that the EU has no interest in sharing borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria – which would happen should Turkey become a member”.
Finally, the constitution is a ubiquitous topic for MEPs, with many supporting it and others introducing provisos – “the ‘passerelle’ and flexibility clause in the constitution be scrapped for good”, argue Jens Holm and Eva-Britt Svensson.
Carlos Carnero argues that “to successfully overcome the challenges we face in the 21st century, we need the European constitution”.
But Proinsias De Rossa disagrees: “concentrating on so-called 'institutional reform' to make the union more efficient is in my view to miss the point. What people want is to see decisions being made and to participate in those decisions which directly affect them,” he says.
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