Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-25-Speech-2-155"
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"en.20051025.20.2-155"2
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"Mr President, the choices facing Romania and Bulgaria are quite simple: will they compete with the economies of Western Europe on the basis of skills, or with Turkey on price? A practical example would be the steel industry. In Ireland, the state-owned Irish Steel was sold to Europe’s favourite steel producer Mr Mittal for one pound. Five years later, just weeks after he collapsed Irish Steel with debts of GBP 50 million and no word of complaint from the then Irish Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy, we had Mr Blair writing to the Romanian Prime Minister recommending Mittal as a suitable custodian of Romania’s steel industry. No doubt Mr Mittal’s donation to Mr Blair of GBP 125 000 was coincidental.
The donations to Labour have continued, and again, coincidentally under the British Presidency, anti-dumping tariffs on steel produced by Mittal outside the EU have continued to be reduced by Commissioner Mandelson.
But what will happen once Romania and Bulgaria are on the inside? They hope, of course, for an increase in their standard of living, but with that comes an increase in the costs of production. Just as Mittal moved production from Ireland to Romania, where will Romania’s production go in due course? Would it be Kazakhstan or Algeria, Serbia, Bosnia? All of these countries’ steel industries have been bought with aid from loans from the EBRD and the World Bank
In other words, European taxpayers are subsidising the export of their own heavy industries. The sale of Sidex was seen to have helped Romania’s bid for EU membership. What will be the price for the next wave of candidate countries? Are the Romanian and Bulgarian governments happy to pay for EU membership with the jobs of their steel industries? What other industries have similar deals hidden away?
If Mr Mittal is successful in his rumoured takeover of Corus/British Steel, no doubt they will follow MG Rover into Blair-sponsored oblivion."@en1
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