Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-04-13-Speech-3-395"
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"en.20050413.24.3-395"2
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"Mr President, as we have heard in this House today, there are quite a few examples of it still being easier for a hammer to cross the Baltic than it is, for example, for a joiner to accompany it and drive in the nail. I am therefore delighted about the draft Services Directive whereby we shall shortly be able to talk about four freedoms – freedom of movement for goods, services, people and also capital – and not, as at present, about only three. Under the current Treaty, a number of the things that, for example, go on in my own home country, Sweden, involving state-sanctioned and express discrimination against people from the new Member States are, however, completely unacceptable.
Allow me to offer a very short but extremely frightening and, unfortunately, far from unique example of the way in which trade unions and authorities together deny the EU’s new Member States access to the internal market. The Swedish case began with a local authority having to build a school and, because they followed the European rules on public tendering, a Latvian construction company (LP-Bygg) was engaged. Soon, the construction workers’ union was there, blocking access to the work place, halting the work, carrying placards and chanting ‘Go home, go home’
Their reason for doing this, they maintained, was that the Latvian company was responsible for signing a specifically Swedish collective agreement and that the Latvian one was not valid, despite the fact that it paid better than the Swedish one. The decision had been taken: the Latvians should leave. The company had recourse to the authorities, and the Labour Market Tribunal, on which the union sits, obviously adopted a position in favour of the trade union movement. Our Minister for Employment – and recent head of the trade union movement - also adopted a position in favour of the trade union movement. It is at such moments that I am ashamed of being Swedish.
Exactly one week ago, the Latvian company was forced into bankruptcy. As a result, we have school children without a school, taxpayers with additional tax to pay and unemployed Latvians. All so that the cartel in the Swedish labour market can continue to operate. Strengthened by its successes, the union is now, with the government’s support, conducting a campaign around the country, demanding that people who ‘do not look like proper Swedes should carry clear ID badges’.
That is unacceptable, and I wonder what the Commission intends to do to put a stop to this racism and protectionism that are rife in Europe.
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