Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-15-Speech-1-077"
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"en.20031215.7.1-077"2
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"Mr President, it is not often that this Chamber witnesses real political drama. However, it did so on that day some two-and-a-half years ago when Parliament rejected the takeover directive. Nothing I have seen or heard since then has made me change my mind that what we did was not only wrong but also foolish. In an increasingly interdependent world, where the globe's economy is seamlessly linking together, the single greatest economic challenge we face in Europe – a challenge which we lose at our peril - is global competitiveness. We all know that we are very good at talking about it and we are equally bad at doing anything material to address the problem. Furthermore, whenever Europe has to face up eyeball to eyeball to the challenges posed by competitiveness, we funk it. We funked it that day two-and-a-half years ago, and we have regularly funked it since. We always use special pleading about the minutiae as an intellectual fig leaf to avoid the tough decisions. It must be said that it is all pretty transparent.
To set the picture straight: I may be a British Conservative, but I am not the contemporary equivalent of the hard-faced men who made money out of the war. I am no Thatcherite – never have been – and I am not a Eurosceptic, but I think – some consider this to be an eccentric point of view – that we should deal with the world as it is and not the world as we would like it to be.
If Europe is to deliver for its citizens – and it has to – our economy has to be competitive. Part of that state of competitiveness is to have a system of company law and capital markets that enables it to compete. It does not now, and that problem has to be dealt with.
The proposals we are debating this afternoon are a miserable, insufficient response to today's world. However, we have to start from where we are. I hope Commissioner Bolkestein will be able to confirm that in the event of this proposal becoming law further proposals will follow this one, taking the matter forward – and rather more quickly than this one has been taken because, if it is not taken more quickly, if I am lucky I will be drawing my pension and if I am unlucky I shall be dead.
Nevertheless, it is a single, wretched, shuffling step on the journey that Europe has to take. There is no choice. It is for that reason we shall support it as long as Mr Lehne's proposals are not amended or watered down. On balance – just – it is worse to reject it than to support it and for a Conservative that is a good enough reason to vote for it."@en1
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