Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-11-Speech-4-013"
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"en.20040311.2.4-013"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioners, having observed a minute’s silence, it is sad to have to speak about a piece of legislation that is actually calculated to bring the people of Europe together, to endow them with rights that carry weight throughout Europe, and to open up to them the chance of seeing Europe as providing employment prospects and as providing a labour market.
This legislation has been in place for over 30 years, and, as has already been said by others, we reform it every year in order to incorporate the latest changes to national laws, and also to take account of the most recent rulings by the European Court of Justice. I think the Commission proposal makes sense, as do Commissioner Solbes’ suggestions relating to the amendments. I see it as regrettable that the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats seeks to use this report as a means of engineering changes that belong in the main reform and not here.
In fact, it might seem somewhat confusing that we should today be discussing the revision of Regulation No 1408, for, over recent months, during the last few weeks, and in the last meeting of the Committee, we have been having very in-depth discussions about the major and imminent reform, which has been in progress alongside this, in which, too, we have made definite improvements for the benefit of the European public, and which is, to all intents and purposes, about to be completed. All this, though, has to be said with the small reservation that the great reform will enter into force only in 2007, and that is why adjustments are needed right now.
Let me extend my group’s thanks to the rapporteur, Mrs Gillig, who has produced a creditable and responsible report; she could, of course, have yielded to the temptation to introduce lots of nice amendments, but either the Commission or the Council would have ended up preventing us from putting them into effect. That is what makes this report so responsible.
One problem, of course, still remains, one that my two lady colleagues from the Netherlands and Belgium will address, namely the situation of those who commute across borders; this will no doubt give rise to more major difficulties in all the Member States and will probably still be doing so after enlargement. We have, however, managed to find a balance between, on the one hand, enabling citizens to enjoy the social security benefits of a particular state, and, on the other, preventing national social security systems from being overloaded. It is a balanced report and a realistic one, and what I would say to the Members from the Group of the European People’s Party is that we should not weigh it down with amendments that are actually ill-advised at the present time."@en1
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