Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-193"
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"en.20060214.26.2-193"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, just as he did on his five-year term of office, just as he did on reduced VAT rates for restaurateurs, Mr Chirac has lied for the third time about the Bolkestein directive. It was not withdrawn in March 2005 as he promised, but just went into hibernation during the referendum on the European Constitution. It has returned to the European Parliament today, one year on, amended and modified, it is true, but still just as controversial.
To judge by the large number of amendments tabled – 404 – it certainly cannot be said that the consensus for which the rapporteur for the services directive, Mrs Gebhardt, has worked so hard has been achieved. We are told that agreement has been reached
between the two main groups in the European Parliament to withdraw the country of origin principle, which was the main stumbling block in the directive. There is nothing of the sort, because this compromise was only signed by the representatives of the groups, and was not submitted to the groups themselves. That is a strange idea of representative democracy passed on with the complicity of the media.
We are not impressed by these false rumours, but are continuing to look at the text of the report. This report is complicated, unclear, ambiguous, contradictory and, what is more, dangerous. Not only do services of general economic interest, in other words public market services, still feature in the report, with a few exceptions, but some of the safeguards have also been removed. In the name of simplification, the prior authorisation system has been abolished and replaced by the very bureaucratic system of the European one-stop shop.
Bolkestein is, in fact, simply the sock-puppet of the WTO, with the General Agreement on Trade in Services which will impose the country of origin principle on the states, all of them happy to throw themselves on the Genevan bandwagon. The risk of social dumping has not been removed, inasmuch as the European Commission can rely on a majority of liberal states wanting to benefit from their comparative advantages.
Given that all of our powers have been transferred to Brussels, particularly when it comes to competition, we should not be surprised to see our public services challenged, our professional organisations opposed and our characteristics disregarded. The new world order does not permit national resistance. Everything must be standardised by the law or by the market; for lack of time, the market will take care of destroying the jewels of our industry, of our commerce, of our crafts and of our liberal professions, before it attacks our health and education services and our culture. That is what we are fighting against."@en1
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