Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-039"
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"en.20010404.2.3-039"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, Stockholm has highlighted at least three subjects on which I should like to comment this morning.
Regarding progress and the conditions for economic growth in Europe, I think that important signals have been given. This morning I have heard some people criticising the halt that has been called on certain forms of liberalisation. I believe that if we look at the situation with regard to Ericsson in Sweden and Marks [amp] Spencer or Danone in France, it is time to start asking questions about the cost of the growth that we are in the process of creating. Mr President of the Commission, I have listened to your appeal that Europe should keep its promises, but it cannot do this if it shows the door to thousands of workers. In that respect, Mr President of the Council, when you call for a balance between liberalisation and social responsibility, it seems to us that you are in agreement with the real concerns of our fellow citizens.
From this point of view, I believe, and this will be my second point, that any progress that can be made in restructuring our services of general interest is essential. There is this draft framework directive. We are waiting for it to progress further, because unless it does, what is the point of defining this draft framework when we have already liberalised every sector? We are already well behind schedule: it is time to act and to restructure these sectors.
My second point is method. Many people have already said this before me: Lisbon marked a certain stage, and Stockholm makes it official. It seems to us essential that the conclusions that you adopted regarding better coordination between the Luxembourg process, the social agenda, the Lisbon process and the broad guidelines of economic policy should enable this spring Council to rediscover, or discover, its true role, that of defining policy on the basis of the preparatory work carried out by the Commission, which enables everybody to play their part, the Commission in its role as instigator, and the European Council in its role as policy maker. Because if everyone wants to do everything, though one sometimes has the impression that it is less painful, very often it is also less effective.
Then again, in using these methods, it seems to us that, if we want to take into consideration this social responsibility that you have talked about, Mr President, we shall also have to modify our indicators. We are not entirely clear about these social situations. Admittedly, we have made some progress since Luxembourg, but what do we really know about the way added value is distributed? What do we know about how employees are defined in terms of their mobility? What do we know about ways of opposing these job cuts, which were supposed to be merely economic job cuts, and which are becoming financial job cuts? This is certainly not the Europe that we want to have."@en1
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