Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-08-Speech-3-041"
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"en.20031008.6.3-041"2
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"Mr President, there are two things I must say by way of introduction. Firstly, I was the rapporteur for Parliament's report on the proposal for a directive referred to by Commissioner Monti. Secondly, a great deal of alarm has been caused in Europe, and particularly in my own country, by the Commissioner's various initiatives in terms of a series of research studies, of statistical data on charging structures and behavioural methodologies.
Let us talk about the professions then. I believe that we all need to consider just what the word ‘profession’ means and its impact on the public. Generally speaking, professionals – of which there are several million in Europe – have daily contact with almost everyone in the world. In some ways, they safeguard safety, health and freedom. There is a great deal of confusion in general between different types of professionals: intellectual professionals are quite a different kettle of fish from professionals in general.
As regards competition – and I am afraid that I do not have time to go into the detail I would like in some areas – competition in general means arguing about a price. When it comes to issues like safety, freedom and health, however, professional services mean having qualifications and levels of education that are certainly out of the ordinary and, in any case, not within everyone's grasp. Certainly, when we talk about competition we cannot talk in terms of prices but we should talk in terms of quality. Quality is something altogether different, because it is quality that ensures health, freedom and safety. This does not mean, as I see it, that we can disregard the question of competition, but we simply need to consider what kind of competition we are talking about. For example, there is absolutely no way that you can compare two different items of handcraft with two different operations by thoracic surgeons.
By way of conclusion, Mr President, I do not believe that one should make sweeping generalisations. Professional associations are by no means simply closed shops; they have a function as regards training and lifelong learning, which provides consumers with certainty. Poor, badly functioning legislation that often forces professional associations to act in undesirable ways should not be used as an excuse to abolish the associations themselves."@en1
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