Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-060"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060316.6.4-060"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as rapporteur of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I should like to confirm explicitly what was, in actual fact, already obvious from the previous debate. The Committee is opposed to an integrated public health and consumer protection programme, and with the backing of the Conference of Presidents, we are asking for a separate multi-annual programme for consumer protection. Since the Commissioner does not strike me as entirely convinced, here are the reasons again in a nutshell.
Mr President, allow me say a few words by way of conclusion. It is unlikely that all Members will have a chance to talk before lunch; as such, we will need to reach an agreement on the vote, because this is not a codecision report. If not everyone speaks before lunch, I would suggest moving the vote to next week’s part-session in Brussels, for I think that we cannot let coincidences determine the outcome of this, and that we cannot vote on a topic of this kind with a very small number of people present. That is my suggestion as rapporteur.
The Community competences in each of these two areas are too dissimilar from one another. This is also true of the social objectives of the civil-society organisations involved; internal distribution of competences, also in the Member States, is often at odds with an integrated approach. A patient is slightly different from a consumer and at the very least, we would like certainty in relation to the proportion of the budget that is available for consumer affairs and we want to prevent a situation, when we are faced with a public health crisis, where consumer policy would be the budgetary victim of an urgent public health need which should normally be resolved by means of a flexibility instrument.
If the truth be known, I feel, given the lack of financial perspectives, a little uneasy talking about this report today, because we have no idea as to the level of budget. At the same time, I am acutely aware that the extent of the budget and the fleshing out of the programme in terms of content are two sides of the same coin. It is difficult, though, to restrain our ambitions in the area of consumer policy. For years, all European institutions have used Community consumer policy to illustrate that Europe is very much concerned about the care of normal people. In times of enlargement, when the need to give the internal market a consumer dimension is greater than ever, when we also need to let the European Union keep its human face, in times like these, we cannot curb the ambitions in the area of consumer protection without this having any repercussions.
Since the three institutions are present today – and I assume that the Austrian Presidency is adequately represented – it is for that reason alone that I consider it useful today to argue in favour of keeping the budget as specified in the Commission proposal. I think we should really stick to it.
In consultation with Mr Trakatellis of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, we have carefully carved up the budget according to the scale of apportionment used by the Commission. Accordingly, for consumer protection, we arrive at a sum of EUR 233 million spread over seven years. In agreement with our financial perspectives negotiator, Mr Böge, we did not add anything in IMCO, but let us not misunderstand each other: this does not mean in any way that we will be satisfied with less at a later stage. The three budgetary authorities are asked to take this message literally. We are not satisfied with less, given the importance of the subject matter, the increased sphere of action resulting from enlargement, and the consumer’s vital confidence in the internal market.
I should like to thank my colleagues on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, because they are right behind us on this, and also because we managed to confine ourselves to two major additional areas of concern at the Commission’s proposal which, incidentally, the Commissioner did an extremely good job of explaining.
1. We want the proramming procedure to be more open to involving the Member States that do not have a long tradition of consumer protection, consumer movement, the capacity development of consumer associations and their participation in policy preparation.
2. Special attention should go to the phenomenon of ageing among the population and also to other vulnerable consumer groups. People knowledgeable in the area of consumer law know that we cannot adequately provide for these vulnerable groups in legislation, which, by definition, has a general scope, but in a consumer programme, we can focus on target groups and we can accommodate this vulnerable consumer, and that is what we must do if we want to move towards a warm and human society.
This is the first report of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection in more than ten years in which its late chairman, Mr Whitehead, has not taken the floor. We still miss him, and years of warm and friendly cooperation with him have led me to dedicate this report to him. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your support for all of this, I also ask the Commission and the Council to support our proposal. I thank you for the cooperation, I thank you for your respect for Mr Whitehead, for we owe this to him, and I am also indebted to the people of the Committee’s Secretariat who have plotted the course of this dossier very professionally."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples