CLOSING OF PROCEEDINGS
Mr Jean-François
Rapin,
Chairman of the European affairs committee
of the French
Senate
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Now that we have reached the end of our work, I would like to begin by thanking all the speakers for the quality of their contributions, and I am delighted to see that the academic field of the study of the role of national parliaments is so dynamic. Our debates have been rich and fascinating.
We'll need to take the time to analyse everything we've said today, but I've already drawn a number of lessons from it, which will enable us to reflect on how we operate in practice and also provide input for the working group that I proposed, with my counterpart Sabine Thillaye, to set up within Cosac.
One subject came up again and again: timing. In other words, the national parliaments must intervene "at the right moment" in the Community process. However, it has also become clear that there is little consensus on what this "right moment" should be, and that the national parliaments must act on an ongoing basis, throughout the decision-making process.
This would perhaps require more flexible tools than European motions for resolutions, or at least the possibility of adapting the Senate's positions quickly, depending on how discussions develop.
Across all the sessions, the speakers also pointed out the difficulty of controlling the European Council or certain bodies in the monetary and financial field. This is obviously true in France, where the President of the Republic does not come before Parliament to justify himself; but even the Danish Parliament has difficulty exercising this control: if the European Council does not adopt a standard, there can be no negotiating mandate. Yet, as we have seen, the European Council plays a fundamental role and its decisions largely guide the European policy followed by the Government.
The negotiating mandate could be seen as the perfect solution. It is obviously a very powerful tool, but we have seen that it does not solve everything. It can be adopted at a time when negotiations in Brussels are already well advanced, and it does not resolve the asymmetry of information between the executive and the legislature. For a bicameral Parliament, and even more so for a chamber that does not necessarily support the government in power, the mandate raises specific practical and legal issues.
In addition, our discussions on interparliamentary cooperation have shown that it has a number of limitations in its current form... and those of us who take part can only agree with this... but we have also seen that there is considerable potential for improvement. We are in the process of preparing the interparliamentary meetings of the future French Presidency and we will try to take account of the lessons learned today.
Our discussions in session 4 have given us a clearer picture of this debate, which requires a detailed understanding not only of the European legal system, but also of the Polish and German legal contexts. This question of the primacy of European law, which is not new, is now the subject of political intrumentalisation and should lead us to pay close attention to the process of appointing judges. We will not resolve this issue today, but I hope that our debates at will enable us to move in the right direction.
Last but not least, I have taken from all the speeches that the national parliaments have a fundamental role to play, and no one questions this any more, in democratising the European Union. It is now a question of doing everything possible to achieve this result, because it is a vital challenge for the Union. You can count on the French Senate to tackle this task, in the service of our fellow citizens.