Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-14-Speech-3-056"
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"en.20010214.3.3-056"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what is the path to be followed after Lisbon? I would like to give my response in terms of the content, our responsibilities and the method.
First of all, I believe that we cannot regard the European Union’s strategy on sustainable development, full employment and greater social cohesion as set in stone. The Lisbon process has many virtues and its objectives are extremely ambitious and well founded. It has a comprehensive and open method of coordination and reflects a clear understanding of the challenges of the information revolution. However, it still contains many areas of bias. The current framework to monetary, budgetary and financial policies encourages fiscal and social competition; the ability to carry out public policies is still compromised on a national level and is totally obstructed on a European level. I would say that this is negative integration, in the sense that Tinbergen intended, and it is not wholly positive integration.
These areas of bias are obvious in the current problem regarding indicators. There are comparable indicators at a national level, which are useful, but there are no European-level indicators to enable us to rank Europe’s position in the global economy and to apply common policies. Moreover, we do not study the impact that the choices made by one or more countries have on other countries. Why is Ireland being criticised? Is it for its policy of public spending in favour of growth or actually for its anti-Community social dumping policy?
I understand why Mr Bullmann says that growth is actually taking place but that we must not rest on our laurels. In this respect, it is disturbing that the Council and Commission do not evaluate the social and economic impact of the large, integrated financial market or that of the launch of the euro. That is why we should consider Lisbon to be more of a beginning than an achievement; we must work on ironing out these contradictions and, sooner or later, we will have to change this strategy in order to make progress. Mr Goebbels and Mr Bullmann have, moreover, tabled a good amendment to enable us to do this.
Secondly, the European Parliament should be able to make straightforward choices. In my opinion, the two reports, for which the committees voted unanimously, contradict one another. I support the Bullmann report, which recommends public investment and social legislation. However, I cannot support the report by Mr Gasòliba i Böhm which concentrates on deregulation and flexibility alone. I would like to stress, moreover, that if the internal market does not reach its goal in terms of essential services such as energy and transport, it is not due to deregulation, but because of a lack of infrastructure and common public regulations. I would also like to say that I disagree with the endless reduction in social security contributions, which is still being called for, which absolves businesses of any responsibility and creates poor workers.
Thirdly, and finally, we should indeed help every European social and civil operator to make a choice in terms of economic and social policy. Yet, people are not familiar with these methods of coordination. They have absolutely no idea what they entail. We should, therefore, give thought to our responsibilities. On this subject, may I remind you that, in December 1996, following a report that I had presented, Parliament voted in favour of a resolution which confirmed its intention to hold an annual conference of the European Parliament on fundamental choices in economic and social policy, following an interactive debate between the various national authorities and a public consultation with the key players in civil society. I believe that we could take up this proposal again, in order to attract the attention of the citizens."@en1
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