Your Say

21/07/2004
New Commission President – Plenary Speech

Mr President

I wish to begin by welcoming the President-designate of the Commission on behalf of the British Conservative delegation and our European Democrat colleagues. I want to make it clear that I speak as the leader of the party that was the outright winner of the European elections in the United Kingdom, with 28 seats.

You have shown, Mr President-designate, that you have a number of very impressive qualities that fit you for the post of President of the Commission. You have been a reforming Prime Minister of your country and, despite the setback of the recent football result, you personally can take pride in the fact that you have made a great contribution in enhancing your nation's profile and standing in Europe and beyond.

The next President inherits a Commission that has a major task to restore confidence amongst the peoples of Europe for what it does and how it does it. There have been attempts at reform in a number of areas during the presidency of Mr Prodi. However, I hope that the next President will be bold in reforming the Commission and its workings in a manner that genuinely meets the expectations of European citizens. I hope the next President will make tackling fraud, waste and maladministration a priority of his term of office. I am very encouraged by the remarks you made earlier about value for money in this area. These are matters that still cast too much of a shadow over the EU. We want to see the EU code of good administrative conduct made binding on all EU institutions and officials. We want to see stronger protection for whistleblowers. OLAF should be made fully independent with its own staff and budget and the EU needs a Commissioner with sole responsibility for budgetary control so that person can ensure that there is proper accounting and effective tackling of fraud.

As you made clear in your earlier remarks, Mr Barroso, competitiveness and enterprise are vital for Europe's economic future. The Lisbon process – even by the Commission's own admission – is failing to make the progress that you envisaged when you led that process. I congratulate you for the role you played then. Your future role – which I hope will be confirmed tomorrow – will be to ensure that directives take full account of the diversity of Europe and the circumstances of individual regions and industries. We believe strongly that impact assessments and price tags should be attached to all new EU proposals, including parliamentary amendments.

I want to see the next President work constructively with the United States to fully restore the Union's excellent relations with them. We all know the disagreements over Iraq, but they should now be put behind us. I have confidence that you are the sort of person who will be able to achieve that. I want to see an open and constructive dialogue across the Atlantic, unhindered by anti-American rhetoric, some of which, sadly, we hear too often within this Chamber.

If this House endorses your candidature tomorrow, as I hope it does, you have a great opportunity to deliver on a maxim which had great resonance in my country in the European elections: Europe should be doing less, but it should be doing it better.

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