Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-03-Speech-3-352"
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"en.20011003.12.3-352"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to begin by taking the opportunity to reassure Commissioner Bolkestein. We have already said in the two interventions on the Huhne Report that most of our amendments have already been withdrawn. Both of us have emphasised that here. So far as I know, there are two amendments remaining. The Commission can easily live with that and I hope the rapporteur can, too. A vote will be taken on the amendments tomorrow.
Now to my own report, however. We know from experience in this House that the agenda is very often changed. We are often glad about that to a greater or lesser extent. This time there is a real point to it – my report was deferred so that the debate on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan could be held yesterday. That is certainly more important than the further refinements we want to make to the internal market. It also allows us to hold a kind of joint debate today. The field of financial services, services generally and also Mr Radwan’s report, which will be debated next, go together very well.
I am sure we all agree that services generally as well as financial services and information services deserve our special attention. They are rightly described as the key area of the European economy today. Two thirds of Europe’s workforce are already employed in the service sector. Above all, the dynamism and innovation that make this sector so important will enable us to achieve the objective set in Lisbon.
If my report has given rise to some differences of opinion, they are never about the objective, only about what we consider to be the most appropriate means of achieving that objective. I am sure we can support the Commission’s approach of identifying all the barriers in a first phase, listing all the obstacles encountered by service providers, and then in a second phase proposing suitable remedies. But we have no time to lose. We now have the remedy of treaty infringement proceedings. In many cases, better information from authorities, professional bodies and similar institutions about the law as it currently stands could perhaps help to remove some unjustified obstacles.
In all but one of the urgent legislative measures listed by the Commission – I have to admit it is the reform of public contracting – Parliament has not been responsible for any undue delay on any other points. The call for certain legislative measures to be speeded up should therefore be addressed primarily to the Council. I have already mentioned that we have now at last received the common position on the distance marketing of financial services. Discussions in the Council took a very long time. I hope we can make up some of the lost ground in Parliament and make rapid progress.
Something else that has already been before the Council for a very long time is the two directives on the situation of third country citizens when it comes to providing services – employees on the one hand and self-employed on the other, where the introduction of a service provision card could make a major contribution to achieving freedom in the provision of services. I am also sorry that the Commission itself no longer lists these measures as priority measures in this communication today.
Essentially, our differences of opinion are over which legal instruments will be suitable. We should not rule any instrument out. We will need further harmonisation. I am sure we will be able to implement the country-of-origin principle on the basis of harmonised, coordinated, largely approximated laws in our Member States. Article 50 of the EC Treaty will probably also continue to be used in a number of remaining areas.
I do, of course have a problem when harmonisation is automatically described as over-regulation and when the country-of-origin principle is to be used as a magic bullet, the cure all to solve every problem at a stroke. Unfortunately, things are not like that. We have to go this laborious way of finding the appropriate instrument for every problem that arises. I would again like to point out that even in the
commerce directive – important as the role of the country-of-origin principle is there, and I fully support the content of that directive – the regulating principle is not the only one to apply.
The amendments that have been tabled for tomorrow follow two principles: preserving freedom of choice of legal instruments, not confining ourselves to one instrument, and not making any sector-specific changes. That is also in line with the Commission’s wishes, since it deliberately wanted to present a document applicable to all sectors."@en1
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