Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-27-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20041027.3.3-014"2
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".
Mr President, after this debate, Parliament has the opportunity to demonstrate that it is not a puppet of the Council and the Commission. If the new European Commission is voted down under the Dutch Presidency, that will go down in history as the moment when European democracy took a step forward. The new composition of the Commission that is to be decided later on will not change politically, but it is in everyone’s interests to remove the most controversial candidates. This applies equally to candidates with a history of putting their own business interests first and to candidates wanting to maintain the second-class status of women and homosexuals.
Some important news is that the media have reported that Mr Prodi and Mr Kok are finally acknowledging that the most important objective of the Lisbon agenda of 2000 cannot be achieved. The measures chosen, aimed at giving large multinational enterprises greater scope and freedom, will not produce the most competitive economy. Establishing that Lisbon is failing presents Europe with new opportunities. It is time for a new objective: Europe as the most socially focused economy in the world. That was the original aim in 2000. We then made the mistake of confusing the long-standing pursuit of a social Europe with the quest for as many jobs in the commercial sector as possible. That mistake has now led to the proposal for a Services Directive that allows national legislation and collective labour agreements to compete with each other, to more extensive privatisation, leading to lower quality at higher costs, and again to a Ports Directive that would further destroy the work of the dockers.
We come from the richest part of the world. Our problems are the disintegration of society and environmental pollution; problems that will not be solved by ever increasing economic growth at any price. It is not growth but a better distribution of what we already have that must receive much more attention. Instead of maintaining a constrictive Stability and Growth Pact that seriously undermines the role of the democratically elected government as a problem-solver, we can strive for better public services, social security for all and the fair distribution of the available work. We have the means to actively combat poverty, indifference, crime, damage to nature and environmental degradation. It is there that the new challenge lies following the failure of Lisbon."@en1
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