Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-02-Speech-2-018"
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"en.20030902.1.2-018"2
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"Mr President, the rapporteurs imply that ensuring social cohesion in an enlarged Europe consists of levelling out the differences between countries and regions. They do not, however, have anything to say about the inequalities within the same country, including the richest ones.
How can we dare to speak of economic and social cohesion in a society where there is an ever-increasing disparity between the income of the richest and the poorest? How can we have the effrontery to speak of cohesion when big companies lay off workers to increase the stock market value of their shares, knowing that, in so doing, they are condemning their employees to poverty? The policy of the various governments entails bandying about the word reform, whilst hammering workers by reducing their retirement, extending their working time, cutting their social protection, holding back their salaries and making jobs less and less secure. What is the meaning of social cohesion when governments are doing all this in order to increase the profits of big companies and increase the fortunes of shareholders? What does social cohesion mean when governments are cutting their funding to essential public services in order to cut taxes for the richest?
It follows that, if the European Union is incapable of dealing with social inequalities, it cannot hope to eliminate inequalities between the regions because the two are connected."@en1
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