ALDE: Prodi Commission leaves Europe "bigger, better, wiser"

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 13th Oct 2004

"The Prodi Commission leaves behind it a bigger, better, wiser European Union" Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) leader Graham Watson (Liberal Democrat, UK) said in a debate on the record of the outgoing Prodi Commission in the European Parliament in Brussels today. ALDE Vice-President Marielle de Sarnez (UDF, France), who also spoke in the debate, told Mr Prodi: "You have arrived at the end of a rich mandate that you have marked with your humanism and with the high ideals that you attach, as we do, to the European project."

Mr Watson told Mr Prodi:

"In the long view of the Prodi Commission certain things will stand out. This Commission launched the Lisbon agenda and successfully inaugurated the Euro. It was the steward of Europe's enlargement from 15 to 25 states. This Commission moved Europe into the world of common European security against terror."

Making reference to the collapse of the Santer Commission, Mr Watson said: "In 1999 you inherited a Commission badly scarred by scandal, you leave behind you a Commission in which reform has a firm foothold." Ms de Sarnez called Mr Prodi's efforts to reform the Commission "necessary and courageous".

"Your Commission inherited a Europe searching for the road to economic reform. It leaves behind a Europe that found that road at Lisbon, however hesitantly we have stepped down it." Criticising the failure of European governments to implement Lisbon measures, Mr Watson said that "the Lisbon Agenda has too often been subordinated to the Paris Agenda, or the Berlin Agenda or the London Agenda."

Mr Watson also paid tribute to the Commission's work on European enlargement. "Your Commission inherited the battered but hopeful Europe of 1989, still divided by a line from Gdansk to Trieste. Today that line is gone, wiped away by an historic enlargement that this Commission has every right to take credit for" he said.

Highlighting the Prodi Commission's progress on environmental protection, freedom of movement for workers and justice and home affairs, Ms de Sarnez said:

"All your successes show the extent to which you placed the European citizen at the heart of your concerns, so as to guarantee that citizen a better environment, flexible rules on working and a freedom of movement in an enlarged and peaceful single European community. You knew how to drive your agenda in a fair and inspired manner. On behalf of the European citizens we represent, I want to thank you."