Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-13-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20050413.2.3-015"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, the recent downgrading of growth estimates announced by the Commission, and the capitulation that that implies in light of already low growth rates in 2004, demonstrates that restrictive budgetary and monetary policy at both European and Member State level has held back internal demand, public investment and economic recovery.
This has had an adverse impact on unemployment, poverty, social exclusion and the increase in social and territorial inequality, borne out by the 20 million unemployed and the 70 million or so people living below the poverty line, whilst the large corporations in the EU saw their profits rise by 78% in 2004, and profits as a proportion of GDP in the euro zone are currently close to a 25-year high.
Against this backdrop, how can anyone accept the so-called relaunch of the Lisbon Strategy, when it is based on competitiveness and on creating a workforce that is more attractive to companies, when it places the accent on deepening liberalisation in areas such as services, on increasing the flexibility of the markets, on reducing workers’ rights, on extending the number of sectors paying low salaries, when it seeks to keep proposals for directives on the organisation of working time and on creating an internal market for services? We do not accept it.
How can anyone accept the fact that the Council’s conclusions make only passing reference to social inclusion and refer only to children suffering from poverty, without putting forward a multifaceted and integrated programme to combat poverty and social exclusion? How can anyone accept that, despite the announced revision of the Stability and Growth Pact, the emphasis continues to be placed on meeting restrictive, albeit somewhat flexible, targets, while prioritising the dismantling of public, universal-access social security, when we know that public investment and maintaining public social security systems are essential factors in combating poverty and social exclusion?
Accordingly, we wish to stress the need to remove proposals for directives on working time and on the internal services market and to revoke the Stability and Growth Pact, replacing it with a Growth and Employment Pact. That way, priority can be given to creating 22 million high quality jobs with rights by 2010, to meeting the targets set at the Lisbon European Council and to halving poverty and social exclusion, as adopted in the 2000 Lisbon Strategy.
We believe that fighting inequality of income, promoting equal rights and opportunities and fostering genuine convergence should be at the top of the EU’s economic and social agenda."@en1
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