Álit: tímarit löggiltra endurskoðenda - 01.01.1993, Page 13

usually as easy as trying to get an agreement with
one govemment, through one cabinet. And I am
told that the Reykjavík city council meetings are
something to behold as well.
Sometimes involvement is seen as meddling, and
it is because it does meddle. It is interventionist in
all those areas which the sovereign member states
have agreed it should meddle and intervene in, by
common agreement. But often of course, that means
that one country, at any one time, will be up in arms
because we try and go for what is the global answer
or what is the most equitable solution, on an
European scale. We are not liked. And it is very
useful, and has been very useful for member state
govemments throughout the 35 year history of the
EC to use the Commission very often as the
whipping boy. It is much better to blame them over
there in Bmssels than to blame the deficiencies of
their own administrations back home. I digress, but
I was asked to. Let me come back to the EEA. Let
me tell you what our next steps are. First is that it
remains our firm objective to get the EEA onto the
statute book, in the shortest possible time. There
will be various estimates as to whether this will be
the first of July, first of January of next year or
anytime intervening. We have had lot of alarms
from the Spanish, trying to link it to Maastricht, to
the Belgium govemment changing its own
constitution, so that we now have to have the
additional protocol, carried not through just central
govemment in Bmssels, but through four other
provincial govemments as well. And also the rather
bizarre quixotic, indecipherable problems occurring
in a place called Westminster, which after much
study and much discussion, I have to avow I have
great difficulty in understanding. Anyway, as far as
timing is concemed my guess would be, some point
between the first of July and the end of the year.
And as I said, there are no substantive issues
outstanding at the moment. They are if you like,
legislative and administrative issues. And this
brings me to the point that of course the EC is a
legal entity. You asked me also to look at the
question of democracy in the Community or the
democratic deficit. And I have to say that there is a
whole load of nonsense often talked about the
democratic deficit. Because ultimately, it is member
state govemments, it is the elected govemments of
those countries that are the final decision makers.
The issue has blown up, because it is national
parliaments that ultimately decide to the great
distress of the federalists who want that power
invested in the European parliament. The debate is
between powers of the national parliament and the
European parliament. And ultimately it is the
people that decide. And there is no better
illustration or example of that, than in what
happened in Denmark with it's referendum last year
on the Maastricht treaty. So for the commission, we
cannot impose the additional protocol of the EEA
on member state govemments. It has to go through
all eighteen parliaments. And it is this fundamental
respect for law which remains the guiding principle
of the Community. It is the respect for the right and
not might. So our work program from now on is
going to be, as soon as the EEA is in force, to look
and bring into the EEA treaty all the legislation that
has being passed by the Community after 1. August
1991. If you remember that was a cutoff point. But
there has been a lot going on in the Community
since that date. That will have to be brought under
the EEA treaty.
Secondly it is the ongoing management of the
agreement itself, and that will be very considerable.
Let me remind you of the objective. The continuous
and balanced strengthening of trade and economic
relations with equal conditions of competition and
respect of the same rules. And we are entering a
rather different way of treating relations between
countries. In the past all relations between the
EFTA states and the Community were bilateral.
Each country negotiated separately. Now for the
first time, EFTA has to negotiate as a collective
entity. In unity, in conformity one with each other,
and for us too, that represents something of a
novelty. We have to deal with EFTA countries now
together, and not separately one by one. And I think
perhaps insufficient attention has been given to that
in a lot of the writing about the EEA, that it will be
very difficult. It constitutes a new approach. All this
also means of course that, although the existing free
trade agreements between individual countries and
the EC will remain in force, there will only be
limited bilateral discussions and those essentially
will deal with agriculture and in the case of Iceland
and Norway with fish, which are not covered by the
free trade agreements and only very partially by the
EEA itself.
I would like to make a few other additional
comments, which might perhaps not be included in
other contributions. These perhaps are more
personal rather than representative of any developed
Commission view. I think that the EEA increasingly
will be seen as yesterday’s business. I do not mean
not important, I said that the objective is to get it
through as quickly as possible. But among member
states and other EFTA countries, it will increasingly
be seen as yesterday's business. I think political
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