PES Manifesto

1. Sheffield, UK: plenty of ideas for PES manifesto by Duncan Anderson on Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 20:07

Dave spoke about "making Europe work" ands he talked about European Directives that have been agreed by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, but these directives still haven't been enacted by some countries. There needs to be a very strong mechanism for holding countries and Ministers from those countries to account if they don't implement Directives that they originally agreed. If countries "cherry pick" the legislation they want to enact, after originally agreeing to it, they are just giving the Europhobic Isolationists a rod to beat us with. Within any such legislation that enforces or fines countries if they don't enact European Directives there should the possibility for members of the public to complain to the EU if Civil Servants start to "gold plate" European Directives. And the EU should have the right to hold these civil servants to account. Within this legislation there should be a way to limit op-outs. And any op-out must include a date - no longer than one European Parliament term - when these op-outs are re-discussed with the aim of removing all op-outs. All documentation and reports submitted to the Council of Ministers, all European Parliament committee reports etc together with voting records and discussions etc held at EU level should be included when any Directive goes to a national parliament as a Bill and none of it should be repeated in an attempt to delay such a Bill becoming an Act. And when the directive becomes and Act the aforementioned documentation, reports and records etc should be included within the Appendices.