Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-186"
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"en.20060214.26.2-186"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, our group welcomes the demonstration, for what it shows is that Europe’s people are at last waking up to the fact that this House is powerful. I have to say, though, that I have my doubts about whether the demonstrators’ concerns are justified by the facts, for they are demonstrating against something that is no longer even under consideration, but it is in essence a good sign that the demonstration is happening.
The March 2000 European Council in Lisbon sought to make the European Union better able to compete. It took note of the fact that the services sector was one of the most important in terms of our economy, yet Europe was making no use whatever of its potential. The freedom to provide services has been, since 1958, one of the four freedoms that the Founding Fathers enshrined in the Treaty, yet – in contrast to the movement of goods and capital and personal mobility – it has never been anything other than neglected, and the reason why it has been neglected is that it has been in this area that the Member States have been least willing to fully implement the Treaty, and they have left it to the Court of Justice to make up the rules by way of rulings in individual cases.
The intention behind the services directive is that all that should be changed. The directive is at the very heart of the Lisbon Strategy. It will make European service providers more able to compete; it will help to create jobs in this sector and will give consumers and commercial customers greater freedom of choice. It has to be said, though, that the directive is, first of all, the result of a political decision, the decision in favour of the clear implementation of the Treaty. That makes it a test case for the Commission and for the Member States; it also shows how serious we in this House are about our affirmations of the Lisbon Strategy. The proposal put forward by the Commission was an ambitious one; parts of it were open to question, others missed the mark, and it was the subject of criticism, some of which was justified and much of which was not. What became known as the Bolkestein directive became the occasion for expressions of disquiet about the consequences of globalisation, of the enlargement of the EU, about the pressure of increased competition and misgivings about economic realities in general.
Even here in this House, people had some misguided ideas, which manifested themselves in attempts to block the directive itself or make it easier for the Member States to erect barriers within the internal market. The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats came up with some substantial improvements to what the Commission had proposed, and I am most grateful to our rapporteur, Mr Harbour, and to all those in our Group, those in the other groups, and also the rapporteur, Mrs Gebhardt, for all the work that they have put in. Our group virtually rewrote the directive, and the document we have before us today is the result of those efforts, in the course of which we showed all the willingness to compromise that was required. While we do want broad agreement on this directive, we do not want compromise at any price. What we do want is for the business of setting up in more than one Member State and of rendering services across national borders to be substantially improved and made much simpler.
We do not want the case law of the European Court of Justice to be transposed word for word, along with all its imponderables and the specific circumstances of individual cases. What we do want is for businesses and the authorities in the Member States to have more legal certainty; we want the Member States to cooperate more in combating illegal temporary work and bogus self-employment. Most of all, though, we want a directive with clear and fair rules that establish once and for all an internal market in services, an internal market in which all service providers, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, and all consumers too, really can participate. We want a directive that really does make us better able to compete internationally, that ensures the rapid integration of the new Member States into the internal market, a directive that enable us to make the best possible use of all our potential for growth and job creation while remaining faithful to the principles of the social market economy.
What we would like to see, at the European Council’s Spring Summit, is a political agreement founded upon the outcome of this House’s vote. It must include those points that are backed in that vote by a broad majority. Then, before this year is out – perhaps even, Mr President-in-Office, under your presidency in its first half – we will be able to adopt the Lisbon Strategy’s most important legislative component.
Every day that is lost to us means less competitiveness, less of an internal market, and hence less employment and growth. We have to show the people of the European Union that we take their concerns and fears seriously. We also, however, have to give them the leadership that will restore their hope and confidence and give our great European project a future. This European Union of ours is our shared project, and as such we must defend it and lead it into the future."@en1
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