Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-016"
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"en.20040914.2.2-016"2
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"Mr President, I am in broad sympathy both with most of the main themes of your address and with the approach that underpins them, and, on behalf of my group, I thank you for what you have said. It reinforces our conviction that we can build up a very constructive and cooperative relationship with you.
You mentioned company relocations, and, likewise, as regards the work of lawmaking that awaits us, I do not want to conceal from you our group’s profound disquiet at the Commission’s draft directive on the deregulation of services, the so-called ‘Bolkestein directive’, which, in effect, proposes to replace the current law of the host country with that of the country of origin. To put it another way, it aims to allow businesses providing services to apply in all countries the social security regulations of their countries of origin. Such an arrangement could be, as one can well imagine, a recipe for social dumping.
We would also welcome, in due time, the measures envisaged under Tampere II. As for the mid-term review of the Lisbon Agenda, to which you also referred, and which, in the year 2000, promised us that by 2010 we would have full employment and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, we should not wait until March 2005 before getting down to it. Right now is the time for us to make our contribution to the debate in the form of thoughts derived from the last four years, which have been an enlightening experience.
Quite apart from our legislative work, there are certain great issues concerning civilisation with which we have to get to grips in order to raise at the European Council the issue of what sort of role the European Union should be playing on the global stage. You mentioned some of them in your speech: our approach to the fight against terrorism and to defending global security, for instance; or the issue of our relations with the countries of the South, and, in particular, those on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. I am also thinking of the ever more worrying problem of global warming, and of that of media concentration, which is a very live issue in many countries of the EU.
All these things featured in your speech. Obviously, there are still other issues, such as the need to take action to combat such scourges as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, from which, last year, six million people died across the world. Anyone here could add to the list of subjects that absolutely must have a place on our agenda. You are right to say that discussion of these issues is among our responsibilities.
Finally, if you will permit me, I would like to address a transversal subject that you also mentioned: the European Constitution. I am glad that you said, as you did, that the European Parliament will have to transform itself, by organising an open and pluralistic debate, into a great
. I do not actually think that this House should limit itself to telling our fellow-citizens, when the time has come – if I may use an expression of which Mr Giscard d'Estaing, the former President, is fond – what is the right choice to make, particularly given that such an injunction would probably have little effect on those who wonder what direction European integration is taking, and who, in one way or another, represent the majority of the EU’s citizens.
Contrariwise, far from fleeing problems or opposition, we will in fact have to initiate a real democratic, pluralist and open debate on civil society, without relying solely on quasi-institutional partners in dialogue at summits, a debate on the nodal points of this treaty, which has ambitions to be a constitution, and more particularly on those by which the EU’s citizens actually judge it, that is to say on its policies and its functioning as derived from the Single European Act and from the Maastricht Treaty, which the draft Constitution is intended to put on a permanent footing.
In itself, political courage of this kind would be, perhaps not the new European dream to which you, Mr President, have aspired, but at least an encouraging innovation, a positive message addressed to our fellow-citizens and a good start not only for this new legislature, but also – with more personal reference to you, Mr President – for your own term of office."@en1
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