Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-02-Speech-1-105"
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"en.20030602.7.1-105"2
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"Mr President, let me start by saying something to my friend and colleague Mr Désir, who spoke before me because he had a plane to catch. Much as I respect him, the great majority of our group backs this resolution, this compromise that we have reached. I might add that we also take the view that this directive safeguards the
or – as we would say – services of general interest. Indeed, what results from it is a new legal certainty. Services of general interest are compatible with competition, and, should the public interest so require it, the Member States will also be able to decide on derogations from the law on competition.
What the French may, however, find painful is the fact that
will come to an end, so that prices will not be the same everywhere, but I wonder what disadvantage is involved in the possibility of prices falling in one part of a country? That is precisely the effect we intend competition to have. I would remind you, by the way, that one of the reasons why we started this debate on the liberalisation of energy markets at the beginning of the 1990s was that prices in Europe were very high, so that it was not only the companies, but also we ourselves, who were complaining that we were at a competitive disadvantage against the USA, our main competitor.
These directives, in fact, represent the end of a long process. Having been in this House for a long time, let me point out that this process actually began at the end of the 1980s – with the absurd variation, incidentally, that the White Paper on the internal market made no mention of energy – and that, at that time, it was by way of the European Court of Justice that the attempt was made to open up the internal market. We said at the time that we did not want to leave the opening-up of the market to judges, but wanted to make it a political process, and that political process has now been concluded at European level by the resolution on these directives.
What comes next? That is the question. Transposing this directive into law will not be straightforward. It will affect the companies, and – as national enterprises become European enterprises – the work of trade unions as well. This liberalisation will entail new legislative tasks, especially as regards our obligations in the areas of environmental and climate policy. We will also have the important task of introducing elements of these into liberalisation, in that it will be a new task to make climate policy compatible with competition policy as embodied in these two directives. It will, not least, be important to involve the candidate countries in this process. I too would like to end by thanking all those who have played their part in this. Let me say this: it is not often that we work together in such a collegial fashion!"@en1
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"péréquation"1
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