Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-149"
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"en.20040211.6.3-149"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I do not wish to dwell at length upon the drama of Parmalat – Italy’s eighth largest company – which, according to the latest estimates, is in danger of costing thousands of workers their jobs and the Italian exchequer some ten billion euros.
Echoing your statement, you have yourself observed that we had a joint resolution from Parliament on this subject. In the context of the various initiatives that you are announcing or that are under way, I should like to hear you say more about the responsibility you are going to have to assume as Commissioner and would ask you to tell us whether the proposals for directives you are preparing appear to you to be sufficient and commensurate with what is at stake, particularly on two points. First of all, I am keen, in response to my Liberal fellow-MEP, Mrs Riis-Jørgensen, to emphasise that rules are necessary because there are fraudsters. If everyone were honest, there would be no need for rules. Rules are needed, therefore, because of fraudsters, and rules that apply to everyone.
If we are to use directives as our instrument, we need extremely short transposition periods, and we need to make sure that all the Member States transpose these directives properly. At repeated yearly and half-yearly intervals, your own services prepare evaluation reports on the strategy for the internal market and do not fail to note that a good many directives are not transposed. I would therefore ask you if, in the case of subjects such as those we are discussing, legal instruments directly applicable to the Member States and without unduly long transposition periods might not be necessary. Otherwise, we shall be in danger of finding ourselves in the same type of situation in a year’s, indeed in two years’, time. On this matter, I consider that you and the College have direct responsibility when it comes to the choice of tool.
I now come to my second point, and I have to say that I again deplore the fact that the Council is not present – I do not understand why the Council is present on some occasions and not on others – for I have already questioned the Irish Presidency about what it intended to do in this area. In the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the Finance Minister was very evasive in his reply, saying that if people wanted to commit fraud, it was difficult to stop them, an opinion that I obviously cannot share.
Where off shore centres are concerned, Commissioner, why not raise the issue of effective international regulation within the context of the WTO negotiations? Indeed, the question has as much to do with world trade as with capital transactions. A number of countries are requesting new WTO rules where financial services are concerned. Do you not think that the European Union – the Council and the Commission – could take this debate to the WTO, where we have constraints in place? Within the FATF, the OECD and United Nations committees, we have for years been discussing the problem of regulating off shore centres and, not to beat around the bush, of abolishing tax havens. Do you not think that it is time to move up a gear, or do we still have to wait for another ten financial scandals?
Let me conclude, Mr President, by saying that, in my view, we have here a unique opportunity to show Europeans how useful the European Union is. The Parmalat case is genuinely scandalous, as is the fact that the political authorities are not doing more and doing it more quickly, a course of action in which I would therefore encourage you."@en1
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