Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-104"
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"en.20000411.5.2-104"2
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"Madam President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I should like to start by saying that we in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party did not especially agree with the observations made by Mrs Fontaine in her speech at the Lisbon Summit. However, we were very pleased about the far-sighted messages which were to be found in the conclusions from the Summit. We are particularly pleased about the emphasis placed upon Europe’s creating prosperity and employment by strengthening the market economy and increasing competitiveness, partly through greater flexibility in the labour market and reduced social charges in connection with low-paid jobs. I also want to express satisfaction at the fact that the open coordination with which we are familiar from employment policy is to be used as a tool in other areas to promote the use of information technology and reinforce training and strengthen research. Working for common goals in this open and flexible way, in which countries can measure themselves against each other and learn from one another, is a good way both of ensuring progress and, at the same time, of guaranteeing individual countries’ freedom to seek their own solutions to their own problems.
I would also express great satisfaction at the fact that the opinion sets a time-frame for developing the single market in important areas, chiefly through the commitment to rapidly create a legal framework for e-commerce. However, there is, in fact, just a great a need to develop the traditional economy, and I am therefore delighted at the emphasis on increased research efforts and on the enlargement of the single financial market, as well as at the Council’s support for liberalisation within the energy, postal and transport sectors, even though it has not set a time scale for such liberalisation. In developing employment policy and combating social exclusion, it is only right to invest not only in economic growth but also in education and training as a way of giving those who are excluded from society a foothold in the labour market and enabling them to help themselves. There are major advantages in a form of coordination based upon benchmarking, but we should of course be careful that the whole process does not take a bureaucratic turn or lead to over-zealous management. Finally, I would offer an important and perhaps less complimentary remark. In the Lisbon conclusions, the Council refers a good deal to what it is going to do in the future, perhaps following proposals on the part of the Commission. I hope that we are not to read too much into this apparent emphasis upon the intergovernmental character of EU cooperation."@en1
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