Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-016"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20010404.2.3-016"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Madam President, the Stockholm Summit was hardly the greatest diplomatic achievement with regard to the development of the European Union; however, the business conducted at the Stockholm Council did certainly reflect the reality of what is happening in the European Union at this time. European Union leaders demonstrated solidarity in the face of the problem of foot-and-mouth disease, which threatens the European agricultural sector at this time. European leaders acted as a force for peace in the Balkans by offering timely support for the Macedonian Government and there was a full political and economic dialogue with the Russian President, Mr Putin.
Some progress was certainly made towards achieving the targets set at Lisbon last year to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by the year 2010. The Member States of the European Union are fully committed to the goal of full employment and we also see the achievement of this objective as an important way of meeting the challenge of an ageing population in Europe.
The European Union employment rate targets, which have to be reached by the year 2010, mean that steady progress has to be made over this period if these objectives are to be met. Increasing employment rates will demand the active implementation of employment policies as foreseen under the European employment guidelines.
We do not want to build a two-tier Europe Union, a European Union of the haves and a European Union of the have-nots. We want to ensure that all the citizens of the Union are given opportunities to integrate fully into the workplace and to this extent we must ensure the intensification of training and education programmes for those without skills as well as putting in place retraining opportunities for the existing workforce.
Certainly, much progress has been made in the last 12 months with regard to educating and training the European workforce in the benefits which lie open for us all from the use of the Internet and related e-commerce opportunities. The European Council did address the demographic challenge of an ageing population of which people of working age constitute an even smaller part. The issue of how best the Union is going to deal with future public and private pension programmes is a serious matter, which must be addressed by all EU Member States as a matter of priority.
Agreement was not reached on how best to liberalise the gas and electricity sectors in Europe. However, the structures do exist for addressing these outstanding issues on the basis of cooperation between the Member States of the Union. On this latter point, any further liberalisation of postal service operations in Europe must be fair and must be balanced and postal services play an important social and economic function in rural towns and villages within the Union. I certainly will not support a structure whereby postal services are liberalised in Europe and this only results in the quality of the postal service operations being diminished within the territories of the Union.
I certainly will not support a situation whereby postal service operations will be cherry-picked by private operators, servicing only key lucrative urban areas which will benefit from such reform programmes at the expense of the rural parts.
Finally, certainly an achievement of the Council at Stockholm was the agreement to fast-track the development of a common approach for the regulation of financial services within the Union. The implementation of this plan has been subject to delays, which have prevented Europe, in the past, from taking full advantage of the benefits of the single market."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples