Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-14-Speech-2-351"
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"en.20060214.28.2-351"2
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"Mr President, following talks with the staff and managers of two dozen small and medium-sized enterprises in Hesse alone, and with representatives of trade unions and employers, things looked gloomy, to be quite honest, for an acceptable Services Directive. In the wake of the one-sided Bolkestein approach, the compromise now reached strikes the right balance between removing obstacles and national barriers in the internal market and the need for social cohesion. Services of general interest should not be liberalised, and nor should any public companies be privatised. Nor will competition law or state aid rules be restricted. Fears that it would result in social and wage dumping are no longer justified.
The new principle of free movement of services provides that the countries in which the services are provided can insist that their national regulations are complied with, and that compliance monitored. That applies to guarantees of public safety and order and to environmental and health protection. The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs gave the process of greater cooperation added impetus, and that is important. We think it is important that industrial safety must not be put at risk and that existing arrangements from tariff agreements must be upheld.
The Posting Directive has priority, which means that the construction sector and other sensitive sectors in the Member States can be protected, and minimum wages can be maintained. In order to prevent business from simply registering a PO Box address in another Member State, a consumer-friendly regulation has been laid down: a branch office will only be recognised if it can be demonstrated to have appropriate infrastructure and a permanent presence.
Many of the slogans at today's demonstration were not up-to-date. People are entitled to protest in public, but they have greater credibility if the content of their protests is accurate. The public, the Commission and the Council are awaiting the decision of this Parliament, and there is an awareness everywhere of how important this House really is. The inter-group compromise is the right way to go. The Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats has been consistent in its basic intention both to give the internal market a new dynamism – with Lisbon as the watchword – and to maintain social standards."@en1
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