Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-15-Speech-4-036"
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"en.20011115.2.4-036"2
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".
Mr President, this has been a highly political debate in which the problem now facing all the Member States has been aired, as have the widely differing views and approaches which are reflected in both the European Parliament and the Council. Two major sets of issues have been debated.
The first relates to the restructuring of the airlines. The second relates to the need for social intervention. As far as the first is concerned, I think that all the speakers agreed on the need for restructuring and for a new airline model in Europe. There are three points worth making here: first, the present traditional model of ownership and control obviously will not allow the degree of restructuring we would like, or rather the degree of restructuring required. Meaning that we need a new approach, with a more European dimension.
The second point is that, in today's global world, Europe is not negotiating with one voice. This works to the detriment of the European airlines.
And the third point relates to state aid.
The point was made that we are debating whether or not to support the airlines and that, when we finally make our decision, it will be too late, because the European airlines will already have gone out of business. The law on state aid is not the Koran. Let us assume that a decision is taken on state aid. What tool do we have at European level? Can we decide to give state aid to airlines? Of course not. What we can decide at European level is a yes or a no and the facility to grant state aid then shifts to the national level. Meaning that we have national governments with different capabilities, different frameworks and different airlines. Meaning that we will probably end up with a direct distortion of competition and the internal market. Consequently, the state aid path is a hard path to tread as things currently stand in Europe. To focus on three of the points of the dialogue, I would simply highlight what was said repeatedly by the members and the Belgian minister. That now more than ever we need a European transport policy, not national policies which at the moment are leading nowhere fast.
As far as the second line of approach – social policy – is concerned, I analysed the potential for intervention under the Social Fund in my first intervention. Policy to deal with the social fallout and employment needs to be taken, of course, at local, national and European level. As far as intervention under the Social Fund is concerned, as we have been asked directly to table proposals, I should like to say that, depending on their particular circumstances and the problems which redundancies cause them, the Member States will need to table proposals to change their current programme for the community support framework so that it can be approved by the Commission. This has already been done in other sectors with large companies being restructured both in Great Britain and France. Consequently, it is up to the Member States to act fast and adjust their Social Fund programmes along these lines."@en1
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