Mr President, can I also thank the President-in-Office for what was a very positive statement from the German presidency about the role of the European Parliament in the run-up to the next Intergovernmental Conference. It was very gratifying to the Members of Parliament to hear that.

But perhaps we should be looking forward. Can I say to future Councils that today this Parliament has to fire a warning shot across the bows of Councils and any Member State or government who think they can pre-empt or prejudge the outcome of the 1996 IGC. Today we must make it quite clear that the European Parliament has a right to be part of the consultation, the negotiations and the decision-making about the future shape and character of our European Union as an equal partner with other institutions of the Union. What is more, today Parliament wants to make clear that whilst debate in public is a healthy and desirable aim much to be encouraged - and, incidentally, quite different from the normal secretive practices of the European Council - that debate will only be constructive if it gives the opportunity for the people of Europe to take part in it and if it facilitates discussion and promotes understanding of the role and aims of the Union.

It is distinctly unhealthy if it is intended to close down debate, to predetermine the outcome or constrain genuine discussion. So today my group is ready to respond to some of the general comments and suppositions which have been aired in the European media recently about the shape of our Union. But we do so by asking where we want European Union to go. This should be the determining feature of any further revisions of the Treaty. The Europe we Socialists want is a true Union of people, regions and Member States. We reject a Europe led by an exclusive few. The essence of the much-needed public debate ought in our view to be how the Union can be made more responsive to the real needs of its citizens and how those citizens can take a real hold on their Union. We need a public debate which attempts to put into perspective what the Union is really about, not one which tries to create an institutional framework convenient to politicians and merely reflecting a current political expediency. Those of our governmen

t leaders who argue either for a two-speed or a piecemeal Europe reflect a narrow blinkered thinking incapable of conceiving of the future in anything but the shortest of short-term thinking.

At this stage let us be a bit exploratory, let us be open, let us be clear. Let us make it clear to the people of Europe that the Union we want is one that adds value to the work of national governments and parliaments. It is a Europe in harmony with its people where no one Member State or group of Member States dominates, where each Member State and its citizens have a sense of their worth, their involvement and their empathy with the Union. We can only achieve this if we bring Europe closer to its people, not by simply making it more acceptable to their political elites, as some would have us believe. We can only achieve this by working closely and in harmony with the parliaments of Member States so that they perform their role in mandating and examining national ministers before and after visits to Brussels and we in this House perform our role by mandating and examining the Council and the Commission as only we can do. In this way we can demonstrate that in conjunction, not in competition, with national

parliaments we provide the people of Europe with real democratic oversight and control of decisions made at European level.

Let us at this stage not get ourselves involved in the minutiae of Treaty revisions and of institutional arguments, as so often happens at European level and which frankly bores and frightens people. Václav Havel when he spoke to this Parliament some 18 months or so ago told us that we had created a very good technical Europe, but we had failed to give it a soul. The preliminary debate leading up to the IGC on the European Union must be about that soul. It ought to be about that soul. If we fail in that the trials experienced in Member States with the Maastricht Treaty and its ratification will have been merely a curtain-raiser to problems that lie before us and frankly we will have deserved it.

(Applause)