Translated from the German
In recent years, the EU has been rushing from summit to summit. Decisions that affect us all were taken by the governments at the European Council meetings behind closed doors. Yes, the pressure of the markets for results is enormous, and this procedure might have been acceptable once - but this perpetuated state of emergency, this "self-empowerment of the Council", is now undermining European democracy.
This inflation of summits goes against the spirit of the treaties and the governments are making more and more decisions whilst interfering with the details of legislation. And with these developments, the community institutions are being increasingly marginalised. Attempts are being made to exclude the European Parliament from the decision-making process and, in principle, national parliamentarians are also being degraded to mere vicarious agents. If parliaments are regarded as an unpleasant waste of time and one tries to boot them out in the decision-making, then this is indeed a worrying development. We must oppose this development: We will not allow more Europe with less parliamentarism!
Only through the cooperation of national and European parliamentarians will we succeed in controlling the executive and holding it democratically accountable. With the parliamentary week on the European Semester we have opened a new chapter in the history of parliamentarism. More than 150 delegates from 26 countries attended the last meeting. This is a strong sign that both sides want to promote cooperation on democratic control of economic policy coordination. Our two institutions are natural partners.
Full speech (in German)
© European Parliament
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