Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-19-Speech-4-027"
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"en.20021219.2.4-027"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, as regards services of general interest, the Commission is attempting to reconcile two requirements which are, in a number of respects, opposed: the need to guarantee the provision of certain services which the market is considered not to be able to provide efficiently and at affordable prices, and the need to prevent certain services becoming a source of distortion of the market or distortion of competition. I believe that the Commission’s concern continues to focus too heavily on the first point and too little on the second, the distortion of competition. This is not surprising, because the governments, and, therefore, the Council, are pushing in this direction because of the existence of
a clear conflict of interests. There are key sectors, such as the telecommunications, energy, water, transport, television and media sectors, in which the governments are both referees and players, they have to juggle with a burdensome conflict of interests, they are not regulators and legislators, they themselves are entrepreneurs with large multinational businesses which are sometimes used for political and other ends. Today, this conflict of interests has yet to be resolved in many European countries. Indeed, in these sectors, a no-man’s-land is being created where, rather than the good of the European consumer and the general interest, the specific interests of companies and of the economic and political potentates associated with them are being pursued.
There are countless cases of the allocation of inappropriate market spaces to such companies. One example is
which uses its monopolist’s profit in the postal services sector to overcome competition through take-overs too, as happened in the case of
which
acquired, exploiting its monopolist’s profit to knock a competitor out of the market. Not to mention
: France agreed to work towards opening up its energy sector within the country, in the sure knowledge that
which was 100% state-owned and not quoted on the Stock Exchange and which could give loans guaranteed by the state, would acquire companies abroad, in Italy and elsewhere, in other words that it would go shopping, consolidating a dominant position in the European market. Then, in Italy, there is the case of a major television company such as the
financed with huge sums of taxpayers’ money, which competes in every way with other television companies as a commercial channel.
This is the situation: there are public services which ultimately create state companies that distort competition. When the states have freed themselves from all the companies, it might be easier to imagine a regulatory state, a state which contracts out or puts out to tender services which it considers that the market alone cannot provide adequately.
I would like to make one last point, Mr President, Commissioner. There is a service, the mobile telephone service, which the Commission does not deem to be a service of general interest. I feel that this is a serious mistake and that, now, the mobile telephone service is to all intents and purposes a service of general interest. Indeed, it is one of the services which is provided most effectively throughout Europe, extremely efficiently and with optimum prices, and it is a service of general interest which the market provides through a system of competition."@en1
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