The newly-elected president of the European Parliament has urged MEPs to invite politicians from Eastern Europe to participate in debates in the chamber about enlargement, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, in Strasbourg
Mr Pat Cox said that when new countries signed treaties of accession to the European Union, they should be given observer status at the Parliament until the treaty was ratified.
Setting out his programme, Mr Cox said there was an "enormous appetite" for change among MEPs but this was being frustrated.
It was necessary to convert that appetite into actual change. He hoped to see a reforming, communicating parliament that would "take risks" for change and he invited members to "engage in a culture of transformation".
It was time for "us, the political class" to repossess the enlargement issue, now that the negotiations were coming to a conclusion.
"We are now entering the endgame on the enlargement debate," he said.
The enlargement issue would probably be discussed in the parliament before the European Summit at Seville in June and again in November.
He wanted to invite members of parliament from candidate states to participate in those debates.
When the candidate states signed their treaty of accession, they should be given observer status. This would create an "avant-garde" from those countries in the parliament until such time as they could elect their own MEPs.
He would like to visit every candidate state in negotiations with the EU to invite them to send observers.
He said Europe needed a new foreign policy. The EU already had "great credibility" because of its record on global poverty, disease, famine and the defence of human rights.
There should be a "meaningful" inter-institutional working group to facilitate greater co-operation between the parliament, the commission and the council of ministers.
Outlining the parliament's role he said: "We here in this House are a tribune of the peoples of Europe." They should accentuate the democratic over the technocratic.
There was a rising generation which was no longer prepared to give "the old permissive consent" in the same way to an elite operating behind closed doors.
On the role of the Convention on the Future of Europe, he said the parliament had a "key role as a stakeholder".
The convention should be the "primary platform", leading the way forward. He was aware that very many MEPs felt there was a lack of vitality in the parliament's debates.
He wanted to "create space here for real political debate".
In the US Congress, instead of going through a piece of legislation from A to Z, you could sometimes focus on certain key amendments which were a source of disagreement.
"We must earn the consent of today's generation of Europeans," Mr Cox said. The aim was to "create a Europe fit for its future".
Responding, Mr Gerard Collins (Fianna Fáil - Union for Europe of the Nations group) said Mr Cox's speech was "the first serious attempt in a long time to face the challenge of the need for change".
On the parliament's foreign policy role, he said: "Why are we not opening up discussions and debate with Iran at this time?"
Ms Avril Doyle (Fine Gael - European People's Party) congratulated Mr Cox on the fact that his speech was devoid of "Eurospeak" jargon.
She hoped his enthusiasm for enlargement and the EU would prove "infectious", particularly among the 65 per cent of the Irish electorate which failed to come out and vote for the Nice Treaty last June.