Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-263"
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"en.20031022.10.3-263"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the European Union needs an industrial policy. Enlargement makes it even more necessary, and that policy cannot be reduced to competition policy alone. Competition policy alone can neither respond to the social challenges and to the risk of sudden relocations to areas of low taxation and low wage costs, nor can it satisfy the ambition of having an excellent innovative industry with a high level of skill and added value providing a large number of quality jobs. This ambition of excellence ought to be ours for the present Member States as for the candidate countries. We must reject any kind of fatalism that says Europe is doomed to de-industrialise or to see its industries concentrated in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe alone.
As Mr Herzog said, I do not believe that the answer to this vision of renunciation or to the illusion of a European economy that will remain strong if it concentrates exclusively on services but loses many technological trump cards lies solely in entrepreneurship; we must also look for the answer in genuine industrial strategies, which are still hard to discern in the Commission communication. A real industrial policy must be based on large projects and sustained strategies in sectors combining, for example, research and development efforts with the creation of European champions. By encouraging groupings, for example, we could create champions capable of acting on a world scale, drawing after them a whole sector of job-creating SMEs. When that has happened in the past, it has been on the basis of intergovernmental and not Community initiatives. We can think of Airbus, the defence industries or Arianespace, while there are many other fields – you mentioned several – where much more aggressive and vigorous action would be required. I think it is up to the Commission to take initiatives in this respect, although, it is true, we need to give it the competences to do so. Perhaps we should have an industrial policy Commissioner alongside the competition Commissioner.
Finally, as Mrs Zrihen has said, this industrial policy, including the aspect of competitiveness, must form part of a social vision. There are essential questions that cannot be avoided here. I will mention tax harmonisation, the conditions of social harmonisation, especially after enlargement, and worker representation in large European groups, without which there will be no real social dialogue. In this connection, the revised directive on European works councils is still blocked, even though it has been approved by Parliament. Finally, I will mention policy on lifelong learning.
I will end on this point by pointing out that in our businesses, in our countries, it is easier to give training opportunities to people who are already very highly qualified than to the least well qualified persons. That is why I hope that our Assembly will vote by a very large majority in favour of Mrs Zrihen’s report and that the Commission will take note of it."@en1
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