Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-09-Speech-3-038"
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"en.20050309.5.3-038"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, I, too, would like to thank Mr Lehne and Mr Goebbels particularly, and also the other Members for their constructive cooperation. My warm thanks go to them all.
Five years after the inception of the Lisbon strategy, we have now reached a fork in the road, and I would like to take this as an opportunity to reiterate something fundamental about the situation in Europe. The last time Europe suffered from this sort of structural mass unemployment was in the 1930s. In Germany, from which I come, the number of unemployed is higher than at any time in the history of the Federal Republic, having gone over the million mark in North Rhine-Westphalia, which both Commissioner Verheugen and I call home. At the same time, many Member States are getting deeper and deeper into debt, and science and research are going elsewhere as the intellectual, moral and political consequences of mass unemployment spread – lower turnouts at elections, general dissatisfaction with politics, burgeoning racism, and extremism from both the Right and the Left. All of these things we have to face up to.
We have had five wasted years in which we wanted everything and achieved nothing, and now Europe must come to a decision. Do we have the courage and the strength to at last go into battle against mass unemployment? Do we have the courage and the strength to turn things around, and go for more jobs and more growth? Do we have the courage and the strength to stop focussing on those who are still in work and at last turn our eyes upon those who want to work but cannot? In response to that, I say that we must, clearly, summon up the courage and strength to do these things, and it is no less clear that they call for a combined effort by all of us and for absolute concentration on greater competitiveness. Let us at last come to grasp what that is: the indispensable requirement for more growth and new jobs, without which we will not achieve the ambitious social and environmental goals of which we are all in favour, as the resolution says.
In this, the completion of the internal market as the engine of development will be crucial. None of us can any more be ignorant of the fact that the European internal market has created two million jobs since 1993. That being so, can we afford to have a European market for services that exists only on paper? Ought we not, therefore, to concentrate on the sector that now accounts for 70% of the European Union’s gross domestic product? There is enormous potential for growth in the reduction of obstacles to the provision of services across borders. If we want to put Europe on course for growth and combat mass unemployment, this is where we have to start. In this debate, let me add, those rabble-rousers who know nothing except how to stoke people’s fears have had a free run for far too long, and I am at present primarily referring to the unholy alliance that has been forged this week in Westphalia, on the other bank of the Rhine. President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder are waging a campaign of half-truths and falsehoods that play on people’s fears, and so let me make it quite plain that it is a particularly good thing that the Commission has at last fought back against such polemics. I would like to congratulate Commissioner McCreevy on his passionate appeal yesterday. Let us muster the courage to fight mass unemployment. I also believe that we should be having this debate in Brussels rather than in Strasbourg."@en1
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