RESULTS OF THE MILAN COUNCIL MEETING

by Altiero Spinelli

SUMMARY: The European Parliament considers the results of the Milan Council meeting (29 June 1985) on the basis of a report presented by the Italian president, Bettino Craxi.

Having taken note of the Dooge committee's report, the Community Heads of State and Government decided to convene a conference of representatives of Community Governments to prepare - under article 236 of the EEC Treaty - proposals for the amendment of the Treaties establishing the Communities with a view to improving the functioning of the institutions, achieving the internal market and integrating political cooperation within Community activities. The Council's decision was adopted, with the United Kingdom, Denmark and Greece voting against. Notwithstanding opposition from the Governments totally opposed to supranational development of the Community, it is evident that the spirit of the proposals put forward a year earlier by Mitterrand and supported by a majority of the representatives of heads of Governments on the Dooge committee has been completely set aside and that the nationalist stubborncss of all national diplomacy is reasserting itself, as it has so often on other occasions, most recently when th

e Stuttgart declaration was drawn up.

Spinelli reiterates the demands repeatedly made by the European Parliament, warning the Council and the Governments of the risk that the process which commenced at Milan will be brought to a halt if those demands arc not met. "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli Editor. (EP, 9 July 1985)

Mr President, the European Council in Milan prepared a list of the major policies which, at the present time, the Community has to carry out.

If the European Council had done no more than give its august but platonic agreement to these policies, we might remain relatively unmoved by this list of wishful requests. The European Council likes pointing out great goals to the Community; but, usually, these goals are never reached, because the Community bodies that ought to achieve them are unsuccessful. And today, also, the fact that, in Milan, these goals were proclaimed in vibrant tones does not make them any easier of achievement. The unified market ought to have been in existence from the end of the transitional period of the EEC - in other words, for over fifteen years; and it is really nothing to get very excited about when, in Milan, we hear all of this described as a goal to be achieved in seven years, without a common currency, and without fiscal harmonization. Great research and develop merit projects were outlined by the Commission in the early seventies, and the Council accepted them then in principle, little has come out of them. And today

, working in the same old way, with programmes to be determined by intergovernmental meetings and agreements, and relying on a weak financial contribution from the Community, do we really hope to start closing Europe's technological gap?

The European Council in Milan however marked an historic turning point in the life of the Community, because it recognized that, with the Community and political cooperation as they are today, it is neither possible to tackle new problems nor to hold on to the gains that have already been made; because the majority of the Council rejected the idea that we can get out of the impasse in which we find ourselves by simply making the instruments which the Community has at its disposal work better, and therefore decided to call an inter governmental conference to fix, in the form of treaties for ratification, the fundamental laws necessary to reform the Council's decision-making procedure, to increase the role of the European Parliament and the Commission's managerial powers, and to define new fields of joint activity in the economic and political field.

Almost as though to emphasize its own lack of efficiency the Council knowing as it did that, in order formally to call this conference it had to obtain the opinion of this Parliament, and knowing also that we should be meeting here today - was still not able to put this request before us. But we shall not saddle ourselves with the responsibility of letting the autumn come without any action having been taken, and we will express our opinion now, knowing anyway as we do the precise terms in which the European Council has formulated its decision.

It is our opinion that this conference must be held, and that the aims to be achieved are those that the Council has indicated. But to this opinion in favour, which had to be forthcoming in order to start things moving, the European Parliament has a duty to add a number of precise requests, firmly calling on the Council and, subsequently, the conference to bear them in mind.

The Committee on Institutional Affairs has therefore drawn up a motion for a resolution that I shall briefly outline to you, on which it proposes that this Assembly should vote.

First of all, the Parliament must deplore the lack of coherence and realism in the approach of the European Council, insofar as it proposing four different types of institutional procedure for revising the existing Treaties, drafting a new treaty on political cooperation, defining the reforms needed to finalize the internal market, and creating a framework for European technological cooperation.

We say again emphatically that what is needed today is a single treaty that encompasses all Community policies and policies for political cooperation, and entrusts their implementation to efficient, democratic institutions of the Community or the Union.

The European Parliament has long since drawn up and approved a Draft Treaty, which meets these requirements. This treaty has the merit of being coherent and realistic, and it was drawn up by representatives of a large majority of the political parties existing in our countries. If the conference wants to work with the speed that has been asked of it, on the subjects that have been assigned to it, it must take as its basis the text already prepared by the Parliament, proposing amendments where it considers them necessary, but respecting its good points and its spirit, as the Dooge Report proposes.

Since it is a treaty between states that has to be drawn up, it must naturally be discussed by the governments in an intergovernmental conference, and approved and signed by them before being finally presented for ratification. But it is not simply a treaty: it is the fundamental law that a Community already in existence wishes to enact so as to become a real Union. And that, in true democratic manner, must be done and approved by the Assembly that legitimately represents the citizens of the Community.

For this reason we formally demand that, after having duly discussed and approved the text of the Treaty, the conference refer it back to the Parliament for it to be read a second time, and that, if there are any differences between the conference's text and that of the Parliament, an appropriate conciliation committee should suggest a compromise text to both parties.

We cannot accept that an act of such importance as the construction of the Union should be left to a few ministers and the swarms of diplomats in their train. These gentlemen have already made abundantly clear their tendency to let obsolete but tenacious national prejudices prevail, whereas the European Parliament, on the other hand, has shown its ability to bring forth visions and concepts of a supranational character.

We wish the conference success, whilst pointing out, however, that if the conference were to fail to achieve unanimity, the governments of all those Member States in favour should proceed to draw up and adopt a Treaty of Union.

The firm intention to achieve genuine, far-reaching institutional reform should be ascertained quite quickly. It is said that, in this way, a 'two-speed' Europe would be created; but Europe as it is at present is not a -speed' Europe, and if part of it decides to start moving, that will mean the beginning of the creation of a democratic political Europe...

... The door always remain open to countries who are slow to follow and, in the meantime, interim arrangements should be devised by common accord between the Union and the States concerned.

Finally, we call on the Commission to escape from its present state of indecision, which was apparent again today in the speech by President Delors, and unequivocally support the Parliament. The action that we call for is designed to ensure that, from the decisions in Milan, a real Union will be born. It will be a long and difficult process; a complex system of political alliances, some of them new, must be established, and in this system the alliance between the Commission and the Parliament will be of fundamental importance.

On behalf of the Committee on Institutional Affairs I therefore ask you to vote in favour of the resolution, and, with regard to the amendments that have been put forward, to vote for or against, according to what our Committee recommends. We have often been obliged to recommend the rejection of amendments which were quite acceptable as to their content, but which were out of place in a resolution which is intended not to lay the foundations for European policy as a whole but to achieve agreement on one very precise point: - to make the Council understand that we are in favour of calling the conference; to ask it to work efficiently and bravely and not in the way that was envisaged; and to see that the Parliament is associated with the drawing up and approval of the draft.

Let us endeavour, ladies and gentlemen, not to water down this request by talking about everything all at once.

Mr President, even those who denigrate this Parliament most bitterly, even the proudest defenders of so-called 'pragmatism', must acknowledge that if at Milan our governments finally shook off their European torpor, and if they decided to undertake the reform of the Community and the construction of the Union, that was only possible because this Parliament had continued working, in a measured way but still tenaciously, for that Union.

In Milan, with a characteristic reaction of rejection, at the very moment of accepting the idea of reform that was submitted to them by the Parliament, our Heads of Government ostentatiously ignored the Parliament's draft, and its request to continue to be one of the 'constituent powers' in the building of the Union.

What do you want, gentlemen of the Council? Grounds for another quarrel with the European Parliament? This, Mr President of the Council, is quite a dangerous path to tread, both for the Community of today and for the Union of tomorrow. Please tell this to your colleagues!