58 Amendments of Morten MESSERSCHMIDT related to 2014/2249(INI)
Amendment 9 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the European Union and its Member States are facing major and urgent challenges, which no Member State can tackle on its ownMember States could better address within the framework of variable-geometry and variable- geography cooperation - à la carte Europe - rather than within that of a fast- track, supranational integration based on a largely outdated ideology, the mandatory intermediary of the EU in many areas having essentially generated: mutual paralysis, political impotence, economic, social and moral ‘disarmament’, mass unemployment and poverty, cultural and identity-related anxiety and a great step backwards as far as democracy is concerned so that no one dares to hope that Europe as it is today can still provide either protection or prosperity or even the peace that has so often been promised;
Amendment 14 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Aa. whereas it has now been demonstrated that we are not necessarily stronger together; whereas the Brezhnev doctrine of ‘limited sovereignty’ and thinking in terms of major blocs are largely outdated and obsolete; whereas a seven-year old child can understand that twenty-eight stunted sovereignties will never make a single European sovereignty, no matter how often this is invoked spell-like in European Parliament resolutions; whereas old notions of size, scope, scale and critical mass were relevant in the nineteenth and in part of the twentieth centuries, but for a long time now there has been no necessary relation between mass and power; whereas in a world of intense and rapid global economic relations, advanced technology, instant communications and miniaturisation, power now resides in networks, technological advantage and influence and, in the case of a political organisation, such as a State or a union of States, this list should also include political will and social and national cohesion - all of which we should have sought to protect as our most precious assets, rather than to dismantle, if our ambition was to create a strong Europe;
Amendment 15 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A b (new)
Recital A b (new)
Ab. whereas the ideal of peace and the demand for justice, on which the construction of a united Europe was based from the outset, made it essential scrupulously to preserve the democratic qualities patiently developed by its constituent nations; whereas, however, as everyone can see, the loss of national democracy has not so far been offset by the emergence of a true ‘European’ democracy in the absence of a single demos; whereas the regime resulting from the Lisbon Treaty, pushed through against the wishes of the only three nations - France, the Netherlands and Ireland - consulted by referendum, reveals much more than just growing pains: a chronic lack of legitimacy of the EU institutions, the extremely technological development of power, the dangerous entanglement of executive, legislative and judicial powers, impracticable national or European parliamentary scrutiny, inconsistent political accountability, the lack of a European political culture and therefore of a transnational public communication arena, a perceptible vulnerability to globalised private influences, the growing distrust of the peoples and public opinion with regard to the Union, its legislation and of the parties which support the project and the increasingly alarming identity-based reactions taking many different forms;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas the Community method must be preserved and not be undermined by in terms of results - economic, political, cultural and democratic - the Community method is a total failure and plain common sense as well as a desire for effectiveness that should inform the actions and thinking of European public officials more than ever should prevent them from clinging obstinatergovernmental solutions, not even ily to the dangerous supra-nationalist ideology of forced integration and thus lead them to favour free cooperation between sovereign pareas where not all Member States fulfil the conditions for participationtners in an à la carte Europe which finally respects democracies and the splendid vitality of Europe in all its diversity;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the European Parliament is the parliament of the whole Union and plays an essential role since it was supposed to ensuringe the legitimacy and accountability of EU decisions; whereas, however, as the German Constitutional Court has recalled: ‘Even in the new wording of Article 14.2 Lisbon TEU, and contrary to the claim that Article 10.1 Lisbon TEU seems to make according to its wording, the European Parliament is not a representative body of a sovereign European people' (Lisbon TUE judgment, 30 June 2009);
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas the European Parliament is the parliament of the whole Union and plays an essential role in ensuringthat it affirms that it guarantees the legitimacy and accountability of EU decisions despite the absence of a single European people; whereas, the fact of voting for the same assembly cannot in itself create a genuine political body any more than the existence of a market without borders: democracy, the participation of all in law-making presupposes a capacity for mutual identification within one and the same people, which obviously cannot be invented or decreed by Treaties, flurries of directives or costly communication campaigns;
Amendment 38 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas political dialogue between national parliaments and the European Parliament should be enhanced and practical possibilities for the use of the ‘yellow’ and ‘orange card’ improved,and the development of the 'green' and 'red' card, including on an informal basis, improved, so that national parliaments fully assume their responsibilities towards the European process particularly in the drawing up and legitimisation of EU law: the right of legislative initiative finally recognised, the right to issue a politically binding opinion on any draft act, the right of non-participation without blocking other States, call-back rights allowing scrutiny of the content of the implementing acts and delegated acts adopted by the Commission and the right of investigation into European affairs;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the European Council’s working methodsworking methods of the European Council and also of the Court of Justice, the Council, the Commission and the host of committees of experts attached to the last two should be rendered more transparent vis-à-vis Parliament and its interferencthe national parliaments and the interference of each one in legislative decision-making should remain within the limits of the Treaty provisions, which would break with over fifty years of bad habits of interpretations contrary to the law of the Treaties which have proved highly detrimental to democracy, the rule of law and the European project itself;
Amendment 46 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas in order to create a genuine bi- cameral legislative system, the existing specialised Council configurations should be reduced to a single legislative one, and the transparency of its decision-making should be improved; whereas this merger of Councils in one single body conjures up the spectre of full-blown federalism which had already raised it head fifteen years ago at the Convention on the Future of Europe and which the Heads of State and Government had already clearly rejected; whereas the resulting very clear wording of Article 16(6) TEU is applicable to all of them: 'The Council shall meet in different configurations, the list of which shall be adopted in accordance with Article 236 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.'
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas the Commission’s role as the executive should bein the field of Economic and Monetary Policy which it combines with legislative functions (monopoly of initiative, delegated and implementing acts, streongthened in the field of Economic and Monetary Policy by influence on the entire legislative process), judicial functions (competition) and repressive functions, poses a very serious problem, not only the democratic problem of the economic and budgetary control over national parliaments, but also the violation of the principle of separation of powers dear to Montesquieu, without which there is no rule of law but a dictatorial regime; whereas more and more supra- nationalism cannot of course resolve the problems caused by supra-nationalism, a deadly ideology that risks bringing about the downfall of Europe and the European dream; whereas, therefore, the creation of the position of EU Finance Minister, an idea rejected by the Treaties, assisted by an EU Fiscal and Treasury administration, anwhich would bye endowing ited with the powers to implement and enforce any future and existing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) instruments; would be a desperate move which would only make matters worse;
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas the European Institutions and bodies, notably the Committee of the Regions (CoR), the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), and, especially, the European Parliament should, in their daily work, monitor respect for, and the development of, horizontal and vertical subsidiarity in the European Union so that the democracies that constitute the Union and legitimise it, starting with the national parliaments, regain control of the essential conditions for exercising sovereignty; whereas, unless it is in fact conceived and implemented in its original sense of a delegation of authority in a purely subsidiary capacity with a general preference for that body which is closest to citizens, then the principle of European subsidiarity is nothing but a farce;
Amendment 73 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J
Recital J
J. whereas the existing economic governance system is not yet strong enough to tackle all potential future crises and shocks as it should, nor is it yet sufficiently good at generating higher competitiveness, structural convergence among its members, sustainable growth and social cohesion; whereas, therefore, progress towards the completion, in fact the opposite is the case; whereas, therefore, the manifest failure of the EMU should be sustainnoted, as well as efforts to render its institutional structure more legitimate and democratically accountable;
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J c (new)
Recital J c (new)
Jc. whereas the completion of economic, monetary and budgetary federalism would necessitate massive financial transfers in particular to Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, the cost of which has been evaluated by a number of converging studies (excluding the contribution to the EU): in order to overcome the gap in research and development and in the education system and to revive the economy over a period of 10 years the following amounts would be needed in annual federal aid: EUR 122.99 billion for Italy, EUR 86.76 billion for Spain, EUR 30.69 billion for Greece and EUR 17.27 billion for Portugal, i.e. total annual federal aid for those countries alone of EUR 257.71 billion; whereas moreover other eurozone countries will soon also need help in order to ‘catch up’ with the northern countries; whereas the contributors would be mainly Germany, France, Finland, Austria, and the Netherlands; whereas Germany alone would bear 90% of the cost of the annual federal support (for these four countries alone), namely between EUR 220 and 250 billion per year, i.e. between 8% and 12.7 % of its GDP according to studies, which would erode its economic competitiveness; whereas it is doubtful whether the peoples of the five above-mentioned countries have the capacity or the will to take on this burden;
Amendment 75 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J d (new)
Recital J d (new)
Jd. whereas, in the absence of an optimal European currency area, a single currency will never be able to work whatever the reforms and financial transfers that may be undertaken, as has been demonstrated many economists, including no fewer than five Nobel laureates in economics of all ideological stripes - Maurice Allais, Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz; whereas the euro has shown that it merely imposes a disastrous straitjacket on most countries in the eurozone, detrimental not only to employment but also to the fight against excessive deficits and the sovereign debt crisis; whereas after a brief movement of apparent convergence of the countries that had adopted the single currency and the adoption of the so-called ‘Stability and Growth Pact’ to impose fiscal constraints, it collided with reality; whereas, even though since the 2008 crash, the eurozone countries have strived to establish solidarity mechanisms to address the banking and financial crisis (bank recapitalisation and financial assistance for States through the ESM), it is doubtful whether they will be able to weather the approaching financial crisis; whereas their effectiveness is limited by the growing structural divergences within the eurozone created by the single currency and there is a steady deterioration in the real economies of countries in difficulty: falling wages, a decline in investment, domestic demand and economic activity, rising unemployment, and thus mounting external deficits and public deficits;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas the Fiscal Compact should be incorporated into the EU legal framework on the basis of an assessment of experience with its implementation, subject to the democratic approval of the peoples of Member States in a referendum held in all those where this is legally possible;
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
Amendment 95 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital M
Recital M
M. whereas the Union needs a new legal act on economic policy, including the adoption of Convflexibility, a halving in the number of its regulations and free, variable-geometry cooperation e.g. for countries wishing to restore for themselves European prefergence Guidelinor launch an industrial project of common interest, as well as some crucial structuralrather than a new legal act for economic policy or reforms in the areas of competitiveness, growth and social cohesion, which would not have much more success than the old Lisbon Strategy or Europe 2020 that followed it;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital N
Recital N
N. whereas the European Semester process should be simplified, and rendered more focused and democratic, by enhancing Parliament’s s, above all, more democratic, in so far as it is totally illegitimate and undemocruatiny role over it and by investing it with a more substantial role in the various cycles of negotiationc that draft national budgets should have to be approved by the Commission even before they are submitted to the national parliaments;
Amendment 106 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O
Recital O
O. whereas the use of the Union budget should be more streamlined, its revenue should originate from genuine own resources and not predominantly from Gross National Income (GNI) contributions, and the procedure for adoption of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the legislation relevant to own resources should be switched to the ordinary legislative proceduren particular in order to strip it of anything that promotes fraud, mismanagement, patronage and propaganda, to eliminate VAT as a resource which is too complicated and to rely on a simple annual national contribution determined by a single percentage of GNI, to remove the half of the structural funds currently allocated at the discretion of the Commission which uses it to purchase a group of clients beholden to it, a practice which has for the last twenty years been the subject of extremely serious criticism by the European Court of Auditors itself, to reduce the annual contribution of States by the same amount (over a third), to reject the idea of a European tax (as the Commission and some parliamentary groups have been demanding for years), which would increase the burden on taxpayers and break the link to national States and set the ceiling for EU budget expenditure at 1% maximum of GDP;
Amendment 117 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P
Recital P
P. whereas the Union should be endowed with increarefocused investment capacity by ensuring better use of the exand efforts should be made to streamline, by setting an EU budget spending ceiling at 1% of GDP and ensuring the legal, regular and genuinely useful utilisatingon of the structural funds and by fully implementing the existing six-pack and two-pack legal framework, which may be halved in order to reduce the annual contribution of Member States by that amount and to use the other half to help those countries that are most in need, for a limited period, and to fund major projects of European interest such as railway lines for combined sea-rail-road transport;
Amendment 122 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Q
Recital Q
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital T
Recital T
T. whereas the Union needs tocould increase the effectiveness, coherence and accountability of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which can be done by using the existing Treaty provisions to switch from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV) for more and more areain particular by preserving and strengthening its intergovernmental character which determines its effectiveness, by rejecting any ‘communautarisation’ i.e. any further reciprocal paralysis and by boosting the role of the institutions representing the national will of individual Member States: the Council deliberating unanimously and scrutiny by national parliaments in particular; whereas only the Council can by definition have diplomatic experience and an overview of external policies - CFSP, trade policy, development aid - and therefore the High Representative should ensure that that office remains closely linked to the Council ; whereas it is necessary to use all the flexibility offered by variable geometry to overcome the obstacles that could occur due to the unanimity requirement among too great a number of States; whereas the EU needs to honour, in its statements and actions, the principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter and take care to comply with the procedures of exinternal policies,tional law; whereas it is as well as by implementing onderful asset for the whole of Europe that some of its Member States have historically close relations with other provisions for flexibility and enhanced cooperatioowers or a privileged status in the international community (such as a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in wthen needed; case of two Member States);
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital U
Recital U
U. whereas recent security challenges, some within and in the immediate vicinity of the EU’s borders, have revealed the need to move progressively towards the establishment of a common defence policy, and eventually, a common'defence in common', outside the framework of the current Treaties rather than a single defence policy straitjacketed by Brussels institutions and procedures: by giving each people the right to determine its defence interests and thus respecting the national basis of any defence; whereas the Treaty already contains clear provisions as to how this could be done, notably in Articles 41, 42, 44 and 46 TEU; ich is necessary if it is to be effective and democratic, by ruling out any idea of an integrated army, by clearly establishing the principle of free cooperation between sovereign nations, according to the mechanisms of variable geometry, by thus rejecting the notion of an unstoppable constitutional process contained embryonically in the follow-up Treaties to the Lisbon Treaty, by launching a study of a missile shield for Europe that would be managed by an intergovernmental structure and involve those States that wished to participate and by developing voluntary and cooperation controlled by the States in intelligence matters, as an essential step for improving the capabilities of our armed forces;
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital V
Recital V
V. whereas the current refugee crisis has exposed the need for a common asylum and immigration policy, which should provide as well for a fair distribution of asylum seekers across the European Un, which could result in as many as another 2.5 million refugees in 2016 according to NGOs, has amply demonstrated that the European Union needs to have internal border controls reintroduced, that each nation needs to regain the capacity to determine its own migration policy and that solidarity between Member States needs to be strengthened by cooperation in the face of this the huge challenge of migration with which they are confronted at the beginning of this century, by henceforth telling third countries unambiguously what they think about abuses of the right to asylum, by agreeing on political goals and joint actions in the fight against illegal migration, the fight against terrorism and everything that nurtures it and by maintaining above all and imperatively a right of veto or non- participation if they feel that their interests may be seriously jeopardised by a draft act or decision;
Amendment 171 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Notes that the European Union and its Member States are facing challenges on an unprecedented challengesscale, such as the refugee crisis, the foreign policy challenges in the immediate neighbourhood and the fight against terrorism, as well as globalisation, climate change, the consequences of the financial and debt crisis, the euro crisis, the lack of competitiveness and the social consequences in several Member States, and the need to reinforce the EU internal market, (mass unemployment, growing poverty, the destruction of the middle classes) and the need to reinforce the EU internal market, the failure of multiculturalism and the crisis of integration and the serious blows to democracy and the rule of law which have so far been inadequately addressed at European level, and for good reason;
Amendment 176 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Underlines that, where these challenges cannot be tackled individually by the Member States, but need a collective response from the Union, this must be found within the framework of free cooperation based on variable geometry and variable geography - Europe-à-la-carte, which is ultimately the only possible future for Europe - rather than within that of a failed and outdated supranational integration, since the mandatory involvement of the EU has so far basically fuelled mutual paralysis, political impotence, ‘economic disarmament’, mass unemployment, the dissolution of national identities and major setbacks for democracy and the rule of law so that no one now expects the EU to deliver the prosperity so frequently promised us, or even peace;
Amendment 187 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Stresses that the Union needs to restore the lostgain the confidence and trust of its citizens by enhancing the transparency and political accountability of its institutions and decision-making, and improving its capacity to act and scrutiny thereof by national parliaments and improving its capacity to act not in order to disarm Europe and Europeans but, on the contrary, to give them the means to live in security, to be enterprising, to prosper and to transmit and secure the future of Europe as a civilisation;
Amendment 194 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Points out that the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty have not yet been exploited to their full potential even though they contain some necessary tools that could not, of course, have been applied to prevent some of the crises with which the Union is confronted, or could bein fact the opposite is the case, or that some naively wish to used to cope with the current challenges without having to initiate a Treaty revision in the short term; whereas there is no point, however, in engaging in endless speculation, in empty and charm-like resolutions, on the theme: ‘more integration will solve the problems of integration’, that hackneyed cliché which no one believes in any more but which may trigger a backlash against those who for sixty years have been promising a European El Dorado in return for jettisoning the nation, democracy and borders;
Amendment 199 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Stresses that the Community method is superior to the intergovernmental method as it is the only one that allows for transparency, QMV in the Council, and the equal right of co-legislation by the European Parliament and Council, as well as preventing a fragmentation of institutional responsibilities and the development of competing institutions;to make democracy, defined as the ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’, morph insidiously into a European regime of supra-nationalist integration, an EU which the philosopher Jürgen Habermas has already dubbed the ‘paragon of post-democratic autocracy’
Amendment 203 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
Amendment 214 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Underlines that the directly elected European Parliament plays an essential role in ensuring the legitimacy of the Union, as well as in making the Union’s decision-making system accountable to citizens by ensuring proper parliamentary scrutiny over the executive at the Union level and by the legislative co-decision procedure complementary legitimising role compared to the main legitimation conferred by the national governments and parliaments, as the German Constitutional Court recalled in its 'Lisbon' Judgment of 30 June 2009, whereas the absence of a single European people instead of the twenty-eight peoples at present, the absence of a continent-wide 'demos' that can neither be invented or decreed into existence, is still an unavoidable reality, and whereas politics obviously has to be rooted in reality;
Amendment 220 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Recalls that the European Parliament is the parliament of the whole Union; considers that its working methods should be reformed so as to strengthen its control over the Commission in the implementation of the acquis, and to ensure proper democra in addition to the European Council, the Council and the national parliaments as a whole; considers that its working methods should be reformed so as to strengthen its democratic control, establish that of national parliaments in particular over the Commission in all its activities and to re-establish proper and consistent political accountability and scrutiny and genuine transparency even in the areas in which not all Member States participate;
Amendment 235 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Insists that Parliament’sthe legislative powers and control rights of the European Parliament and the networked the national parliaments must be guaranteed, consolidated and strengthened, pari passu with those of the Council by an inter- institutional agreement, and through the use of the corresponding legal base by the Commission;
Amendment 263 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Encourages meaningful political dialogue with national parliaments on the contents of legislative proposals; insists, however, on a clear delineation of the respective decision-making competences of the national parliaments and the European Parliament, where the former should exercisbetter assume their European functionresponsibility on the basis of their national constitutions, which constitute the apex of the hierarchy of norms, in particular via the control of their national governments as members of the European Council and the Council, which is the level where they are best placed to directly influence the content of and exercise scrutiny over the European legislative process; is therefore against the creation of joint parliamentary decision- making bodies for reasons of transparency, accountability and ability to act; encourages the sharing and spread of good practices such as the mechanism whereby national parliaments confer a negotiating mandate on their ministers prior to Council meetings, the solemn parliamentary approval prior to any activation of a 'passerelle' clause or the implementation of any simplified procedure for the revision of the Treaties; calls for the establishment of a practicable and productive ‘red card’ procedure, a right of ‘non-participation’, a recall clause for delegated acts and implementing acts, automatic sunset clauses for some European legislation, a parliamentary initiative mechanism for revising existing European legislation, a parliamentary initiative mechanism for repatriating powers on the basis of subsidiarity; in order to achieve this European democratic revolution, calls for the development of interparliamentary cooperation with the support of COSAC by creating a Council of networking national parliaments;
Amendment 274 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14a. Calls for the development of genuine interparliamentary cooperation, with the support of COSAC, through the informal creation of a Council of national parliaments, in which: - all draft European acts would be discussed and, where applicable, approved by networking parliaments; - they would assume their eminent legislative responsibility in particular in the following areas: the movement of persons, visas, asylum, migration, nationality, foreign affairs, defence, the budget, criminal law, culture, language, the family, education, religion, ethical or philosophical issues, fundamental political freedoms, elections and social systems; - sectoral parliamentary committees would ensure the preparation and follow- up for the various Councils; - good practices, such as the practice whereby national parliaments confer a negotiating mandate on their ministers prior to Council meetings or the consultation of parliamentary assemblies prior to the activation of a 'passerelle' clause or the implementation of a simplified revision procedure, would be shared;
Amendment 277 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
Amendment 291 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
Amendment 295 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
Amendment 318 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
Amendment 330 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. DemandsRejects the idea that the Council should switches completely to QMV voting andor that it abandons the practice of transferrarbitration ing contentious legislative fields toby the European Council, as this goes against the letter and the spiritthe pre-eminent democratic institution of the TreatyUnion, which stipulates that the European Council can only decide unanimously, and should only do so, on broad political goals, not on legislationis charged, under Article 15 TEU, with providing ‘the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and [defining] the general political directions …thereof', vital and wide-ranging tasks that all other institutions of the Union must respect;
Amendment 333 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
Amendment 348 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
Amendment 355 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
Amendment 390 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 29
Paragraph 29
29. Stresses the importance of the subsidiarity principle, as laid down in Article 5 TEU, which is binding on all institutions and bodies, notablyincluding the CoR and the EESC, and is based on the concept of competences being delegated only where this is possible and ideally to the body closest to citizens, and the importance of the instruments contained in Protocol (No 2) on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality; supports a flexible interpretation of the deadlines enshrined in the Protocol and calls on the Commission to improve the quality of its responses toin any case to respect reasoned opinions;
Amendment 402 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Considers that the practical possibilities for national parliaments to ensure the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality should be improved, and networked cooperation between national parliaments strengthened, to enable them, in close cooperation among themselves, to reach the necessary quorum under article 7(3) of the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality; considers in any case that one negative opinion from a national parliament ought to give rise to a constructive political dialogue with the EU institution that instigated the contested act, while even if the quorum is not reached, several negative opinions should set a voluntary procedure in motion whereby the draft act is halted and, if necessary, rewritten taking due account of the positions and concerns of the national parliaments;
Amendment 420 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32
Paragraph 32
Amendment 432 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 33
Paragraph 33
Amendment 464 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 38
Paragraph 38
38. Insists on formalising Parliament’s scrutiny role in the European Semester through an interinstitutional Agreement, including by involving it formally in the adoption of the AGSas well as that of national parliaments ahead of the budgetary calendar instead of after it as at present, otherwise they are no more than recording chambers, through an interinstitutional Agreement;
Amendment 489 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 42
Paragraph 42
42. Calls for the integration of the Fiscal Compact into the EU legal framework on the basis of an assessment of the experience with its implementation and subject to approval thereof by the people consulted directly by referendum everywhere where the Constitution so allows;
Amendment 565 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 51
Paragraph 51
Amendment 577 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 52
Paragraph 52
Amendment 595 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 55
Paragraph 55
Amendment 607 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 57
Paragraph 57
Amendment 741 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 80
Paragraph 80
Amendment 753 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 83
Paragraph 83
Amendment 822 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 96
Paragraph 96
Amendment 840 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 97
Paragraph 97
97. Considers it necessary to strengthen Frontex and transform it into a European System of Border Guards, to be supported, when necessary, by military instruments such as a European Maritime Force (Euromarfor) and an upgraded European Corps (Eurocorps), together with the resources pooled through Permanent Structured Cooperation; suggests that automatic adjustment should also be envisaged of the databases of border agencies such as Eurodac, and, in future, Smart Borders, such that they incorporate the ‘European list of dangerous persons’ and the ‘European Database for wanted persons’reject any obviously ineffective supranational management of the external border, with the Frontex agency that was set up in 2005 proving to be as expensive as it is unnecessary; emphasises that in order to increase effectiveness, each country must retain responsibility for its own borders and for making its own choices as regards immigration and integration policy; actively encourages the development of technical coordination: exchanges of good practice, operational coordination, ongoing joint training, compatibility of equipment, joint risk analysis; calls for Member State solidarity to be enhanced by means of cooperation to address the challenge posed by migration with a view to reaching agreements on political objectives and joint actions such as combating illegal immigration (repatriation, readmission agreements with third countries, etc.); proposes extending the Eurodac Convention to include illegal immigrants and incorporating the ‘European list of dangerous persons’ and the ‘European Database for wanted persons’; at the same time, calls for a generous co-development policy to be pursued by means of active solidarity with immigration source countries, which is not merely aid, but face-to-face cooperation, for example to support the restoration of the State in those countries if necessary, as well as the development of health services, education, cultural and social centres and rural areas, and the establishment of a network of very small local companies and local SMEs, thereby showing that third countries’ economic development or political instability problems can only be resolved in situ, in order to prevent large- scale displacement;