Mr. Gerald Hafner:

We live in a time of shared sovereignty. It is not enough for one to be a citizen of Dublin, Galway, Munich or anywhere else, to be a citizen of Ireland or, in my case, Bavaria and Germany. At the same time, we are citizens of Europe. We desperately need an open discussion about what should be dealt with and on which level. We are stumbling into decisions and saying we need new competences. There is no concise discourse about which question should be dealt with an on which level. We need such a discourse. I do not think the debate for or against the European Union makes sense. We need a debate on where we want or need more European decisions to be made and on where it is better to have stronger and greater sovereignty at a lower regional or state level.

We have to be more honest about the crisis than we sometimes are. I do not think the crisis fell down from Heaven. It resulted from a certain political approach and certain policies. The Lisbon strategy, for example, was underpinned by the idea that we needed to regulate many things in Europe, but that we should not start to regulate the financial markets because they would not work in such circumstances. The lesson we have to learn is that the exact opposite is the case. If we do not have clear regulations on financial markets and banks, etc., the common currency will not work. A currency is an important instrument in keeping an economic balance. If one does not manage to do this, one can ultimately devalue it or work with it in some other way. If one does not have this instrument anymore, economic imbalances will lead to terrific situations like the current one in Europe. In such a situation it is simple to call for money and say, "Let us pay for the debts" and "Let us help each other." We have to help each other. We need much more solidarity in Europe. At the same time, the most important form of solidarity needed involves going to the roots of the crisis and changing the laws and regulations. We cannot keep huge parts of the current laws and regulations while simply paying for the debts. The payments we are making will never reach the Greek citizens and those who are really suffering. By imposing austerity measures on workers and ordinary people, while paying for the banks, we are paying to keep interest rates affordable. All the money we are paying is being given to those who have so much money that they can lend it to the state. We have a crisis in the sense of there being a debt problem, but at the same time, we have the problems associated with too many assets or too much money being used in a speculative way. If we do not come out of that bubble, it will grow and grow. We have to discuss how the European Union can come out of that bubble. We are at the beginning of that discussion.

I am afraid that the way European decisions have been discussed, taken and introduced in recent years will lead to a terrible loss of democracy if it is allowed to continue. That loss of democracy will lead citizens to lose faith and trust in European decision-making. Citizens in the 21st century do not see themselves as mere spectators when political decisions are being made. They see themselves as sovereigns and want to share decisions. As previous speakers said, people do not like to be told that there is only one road to be followed, that there is no alternative and that they have to accept what others do on their behalf. They want to see different possibilities and have a say on which path should be followed. However, that is not the situation we are in at European level.

I agree with those who suggest there is a huge fear in the European Parliament and, to a greater extent, the Commission and the Council about referendums in Ireland and other countries in which referendums on treaty changes are needed. As some members of the committee and some of my colleagues said, a referendum is an important instrument to allow citizens to share in decisions. The solution is not to forget about referendums but to come to better proposals and political decisions and organise the debate better that we desperately need in Europe about the future of the Union.

What is now discussed, for example, by the Van Rompuy paper on the proposals of the four presidents - of the Commission, the Council, the Central Bank and the eurozone - is a whole range of new competences and institutions. We need a European discourse on that. Whether we share the proposals or not we must all be in the same boat when it comes to European democracy and decision making. Perhaps the most important thing that must happen in the coming years is for a new European convention to deal with those questions. Members might recall that in the previous European convention the question of which issues should be dealt with on which level was excluded because the working group did not finish its work. In the end it was told that there was not enough time and that we would come back to it another time. Many other details could not be concluded either because the convention did not have enough time. We have such different legal and constitutional backgrounds in Europe and different understandings, especially on financial, economic and monetary policy, that we need a discourse on them and not just to have fast-track decisions, as is the case currently, that may lead us to extinguishing the fire, but not to a stable architecture of a democratic union.