Bodrato (PPE-DE). – (IT) Mr President, among the topics on the agenda for the forthcoming Council is the Lisbon Strategy, the Union’s Financial Perspective and the resumption of the constitutional process. I will restrict my remarks to the latter issue, as I consider it to be crucial.

Parliament has been the mainstay of federalist policy, as acknowledged by the President-in-Office, whose prudence and perseverance we welcomed also today. We also agree with his concerns: time is against the Constitutional Treaty. In fact, we are at an historic turning point and not just because the reunification of Europe makes a constitutional charter both more difficult and more necessary, but also because the next Parliament will see a significant generational replacement of the parliamentary groups which created the European Community. Europe’s future would be threatened by deadlock in the Intergovernmental Conference, and another failure, instead of ending the democratic deficit, would increase the danger of there being a democracy with no voters, threatened by populism. A failure would also be a negative signal for the objective of making Europe’s economy more competitive, since this objective calls for greater economic integration, greater social cohesion and greater democratic transparency. Nevertheless, we agree with Mr Kinnock: better no Constitution than a Treaty which does not live up to the Convention proposal. We would therefore call on the Council, through its decisions, to rekindle enthusiasm for a more democratic Europe, united in its diversity and capable of having a common foreign and defence policy.