Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-13-Speech-4-040"
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"en.20050113.5.4-040"2
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"Mr President, it was 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in June 2004, and 43 language teachers were having a meeting to plan the next year’s curriculum. It was then that the bombshell was dropped and they were summarily dismissed. These specialised staff had been working for the Commission for decades, and over half of them were between the ages of 55 and 59. The Commission, over which, at the time, Mr Prodi presided, acted without prior warning and without consulting and informing the employees in due time, something that was in flagrant contravention of the 1997 trialogue agreements, which I have here in my hand. This was an agreement between the institutions, signed by Mr Samland for the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets, Mr Trumpf on behalf of the Council, and Commissioner Liikanen on behalf of the Commission, which assured the teachers that their contracts would run until they reached pensionable age.
The language teachers have, by the way, told me that, as a contribution to the sound financial management that you have just mentioned, they made the savings demanded of them by working four extra hours a week unpaid. On behalf of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, and following discussions with the persons concerned, I will ask, as I have done before, what alternative employment there actually was for these teachers in view of the fact that the deadlines for appointments to other institutions had already expired at the end of June.
Your intervention has done little to dispel my misgivings as to whether Belgian law, according to which redundancies without agreed financial provision are legally void, has been complied with. The employer did nothing to discharge its obligations. Was the teachers’ lawyer consulted in due time, for example? I doubt it. How does your conduct square with the principle of good and responsible governance, and with the accountability of public authorities? Is the Commission even acquainted with the precise terms of its own communication on corporate social responsibility? Commissioner, the guardian of the Treaties is meant to set an example; it is meant to set standards rather than undermine them. Something urgently needs to be done about this."@en1
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