Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-13-Speech-4-109"
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"en.20030213.5.4-109"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I must admit to the Commissioner that I found his speech extraordinarily disappointing. He gave a series of general considerations on a situation that we are well aware of. Those considerations were centred around the restructuring of companies in a series of sectors, but did not specifically deal with the problems that we are currently experiencing in several regions. I must admit that I was very surprised to hear the Commissioner condemning the attitude of a company that everyone considers to have behaved in a particularly scandalous manner, Metaleurop, and at the same time praising another company which has been headline news in recent months, Arcelor.
The decision taken by Arcelor to gradually close its hot-working steel facilities on its continental sites was, of course, received with concern in the regions concerned. It was also received with anger, in particular in the Liège region, because it is ruthlessly breaking the commitment made by Usinor before merging into the new Arcelor group to invest in the smelting works in Liège, in order to ensure that hot-working production lines were maintained. Along with this commitment there was a commitment in return from workers to make efforts towards productivity to ensure that the site was competitive. The workers’ commitments were kept but Usinor’s have now been betrayed and the workers feel they have been duped. This is why all of the movements in the region and also the Walloon Government and the Belgian Federal Government are now asking Arcelor to explain itself.
I think it is important that the European Commission also takes this stance. The resolution that we have all put forward together has the prime objective of ensuring that Arcelor keeps its commitments. There is all the more reason for Arcelor to keep its commitments given that you said – and this is the important element in your statement – that the steel industry was not in crisis, that companies in general were competitive, and that there is therefore no reason for Arcelor to want to go back on the commitments that it made unless it is for purely financial reasons. We should not therefore envisage first of all restructuring processes with Cockerill-Sambre, and then with Usinor. The Liège region has already experienced and paid heavily for the steel crisis. What is needed now to ensure restructuring is time.
What the Liège region does not accept is for commitments to be broken, shortening the deadlines that were set for us, and we therefore clearly ask the Commission to remind Arcelor of its commitments. We should also question Arcelor’s behaviour, as we are learning that it intends to purchase a number of sites in a candidate country that will be part of Europe in the future. That raises a number of questions at European level."@en1
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