Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-15-Speech-1-067"
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"en.20031215.7.1-067"2
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". – Mr President, a year ago, in the spirit of Christmas, I prepared an opinion for the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs which was adopted in February 2003. This has been somewhat overlooked in the whole debate, although we have already heard about the latest developments.
I should like to remind you that the lack of arrangements for employees' information and consultation was one of the main reasons for rejecting the previous proposal for a directive on takeover bids in 2001. The Commission acknowledged that, to a certain extent, in providing us with Article 13, but our Employment and Social Affairs Committee was almost unanimous in its opinion that it was not enough. The Commission refers only to national Member States' practices and the Employment Committee's opinion explicitly makes information and consultation a mandatory part of takeover bid procedure, both for the companies making the bids – Article 6 – and the target companies – in Article 9.
The PSE Group is still of that opinion, and over the last month I have prepared a text which is adapted to the situations in different Member States. This was a big concession to the United Kingdom, whose standards for takeover bids differ from those in the continental Member States. We also adapted the text to bring it into line with the provisions of the directive on the information and consultation of workers. That is why the references are there. So there is no real problem as regards differences of opinion.
The only thing is that the main Articles of the directive should explicitly mention information and consultation. My Group wishes to stress that this should be a normal part of the procedure. That is made clear by three amendments that have now been re-tabled: Amendments Nos 35, 36 and 37, and by other amendments that have been tabled by the Verts/ALE and GUE/NGL Groups.
Mr Lehne, Mr Huhne and I had a compromise on this, but between Monday 24 November when these three amendments were adopted almost unanimously in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, and Thursday 27 November, before the Council took its position, they left the deal and voted against the three amendments in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market. That is why that compromise is not in there now.
Mr Lehne's argument that it would have complicated the decision-making process is not convincing. The only reason he does not want this to be included is that he wants to press for a first-reading agreement, but in our opinion this takes away Parliament's right to have any input in the discussion. It is still early enough in the negotiations to make this input. The Italian presidency did discuss this seriously enough with the Council: there is still a chance to do so.
Our Group is ready to support the compromise, although we are not very enthusiastic about it. Our original position was to make a directive without Articles 9 and 11 protecting minority shareholders' rights. But we only want to support it if these three amendments are adopted. If that is not the case we will vote against the compromise package."@en1
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"Van den Burg (PSE ),"1
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