Jens-Peter Bonde speech in response to the Corbett/Mendez de Vigo report
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
"Mr. President,
I still offer a bottle of very good wine to any person who can give me an example of a law which can be adopted with the Constitution and not with the Lisbon Treaty.
In my view the legal obligations are identical.
The difference is in presentation only.
Sarkozy’s mini-treaty will now be around 3000 pages instead of the 560 pages in the rejected constitution.
The majority has the right to endorse the treaty. But you have no right to refuse a normal parliamentary scrutiny of the Lisbon Treaty.
I have asked more than 700 serious questions on the interpretation of the different articles. You don’t know the answers.
You can’t explain why the Danish translation has forgotten to mention the new additional citizenship or the abolishment of the right for national governments to propose their own commissioners.
Most of You have not read - and cannot read – the Treaty because you have still not received the full content of the deliberations in the IGC.
You approve secrecy instead of transparency.
You approve a reduction of parliamentary democracy instead of insisting on this parliament’s right to represent our voters, scrutinize on behalf of our voters, question the executive on behalf of the half a million citizens we represent.
Thank you Mr. President."