Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-26-Speech-4-110"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20001026.4.4-110"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we all carry our own list of recurrent disappointments we can do nothing about in our heads, but it is a good thing to have a moan about them from time to time just to show that we do not accept the situation and that impotence does not always rhyme with indifference, not yet anyway. Listening to what some Members had to say in committee, Members who have been in this House longer than I have, gave me the feeling that this multiannual programme for enterprise and entrepreneurship exercise that Parliament is going through for the fourth time belongs in that category. In substance, people were telling me that good intentions are always welcome but we need to make sure, contrary to what has always happened so far, that the next report on the subject does not have to make the same assessment as the previous one, because nothing has really changed in the position of European businesses.
The political orientation is the responsibility of the Member States. The Council set that orientation at Feira, with the Charter for Small Enterprises. By concentrating on coordinating the policies defined in this context and applied by the Member States, and in particular by a commitment to lowering all the technical and administrative barriers that place needless strain on business progress, that approach would find consummate expression. I hope the vote in this House will replicate the unanimity shown in the Committee on Industry. That would send out the strong and clear signal the business world needs.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you in advance for supporting my report.
Commissioner, I know I can count on your energy and determination to implement this programme. It needs to be linked to other Community programmes and an annual balance sheet should be drawn up so that adjustments can be made if necessary. In that way we can meet the two challenges of full employment and social cohesion together. Thank you on behalf of all enterprises, but also on behalf of our societies.
So the aim of the text before you today is to transform a pointless compulsory figures test into a promising examination of a freestyle programme where the European Union can add value as long as it understands its place and its role in the arrangement. The time when the defence of business, especially small and medium-sized business, was like a corporatist battle is long gone, not just because there is only a handful of diehards left who see the world of business through the distorting prism of the class struggle, but above all because, at the start of this third millennium, everyone knows that the issues of employment and social cohesion are crucial for our societies, and business has a pre-eminent role in those issues.
In fact, it is well to bear in mind that, at both the economic and the social level, business leads. The major job-creator and driving force for social integration, it has also progressively acquired paramount importance as regards training for young people and continuous training, and as it has in the area of land development where it is, in the end, the most efficient instrument. Recognising this, the Fifteen adopted the Charter for Small Enterprises last June at the Feira Summit. Its existence is already affording us a glimpse of the considerable progress that can be achieved.
Besides undeniably constituting the basis on which we must construct a policy on business which genuinely serves business, the Charter has the great merit not just of limiting our action to small businesses, but of making them the central point in our thinking, our priority unit of reference. Parliament, composed of elected representatives who regularly rub shoulders with representatives of small business, is duty bound to present this option clearly, turning it into an objective reality and introducing the only method that can properly embrace the diversity of the world of business.
The SME is not a multinational in miniature, any more than it suffices to extrapolate the difficulties of a small business quantitatively to get a proper grasp of the problems of large units. It does seem sound policy to favour a pragmatic and hands-on approach, putting the small business at the heart of the system, rather than a proposal merely producing balanced statistics that are quite impossible to use in practice, on the pretext of avoiding a scattershot approach.
So I am glad the Committee on Industry unanimously decided to prioritise a sectoral approach to business, the inevitable choice for identifying as precisely as possible the real and specific needs of businesses whose disparity lends itself poorly to a horizontal approach. That would not be effective. Certainly, comparing performance and exchanging best practice are most interesting ideas in absolute terms, but positive intervention in the day-to-day lives of businesses cannot be achieved by that means alone.
So what should be done? We need to start with three simple ideas: first, instead of accepting that we more or less give up trying to reach as many companies as possible directly, we should use the existing networks whose understanding of real-life situations makes them indispensable partners in the drafting, but also in the efficient implementation of a policy geared to businesses.
That is why the report stresses the need for close links between consulting circles and organisations representing businesses, which have much to teach us and can prevent us from turning a good idea into a bad decision out of ignorance. Next, we should take care not to make access to capital for firms, especially the smallest ones, even more complicated. Here we are touching on a key factor in the start-up, development, recovery, transfer, even survival of businesses, and a certain number of decisions that have been taken, or are on the point of being taken, are causing concern. These range from the obscure reshaping of the respective tasks of the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, to the draft Directive on banks' own resources, which we have still to be persuaded will have an impact on the ability of a business to obtain a loan.
Whatever the case, with the advent of an economy based more than ever on knowledge and technological innovation, the Commission absolutely must ensure that the boldest, most innovative, risk-taking companies are helped to grasp the opportunities on offer and reap the rewards of their enterprising spirit. Finally, since the spirit of enterprise is inseparable from the notion of responsibility, we should establish clearly what Europe can contribute as added value in terms of business policy."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples