Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-116"
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"en.20060403.11.1-116"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we have to examine a report that, for the first time ever, is taking on a political dimension. In the 2005 referenda debates on the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty, the notions of an area of free and open competition – as it is currently referred to – or undistorted competition – as it would have been referred to if the treaty on the European Constitution had been adopted – were at the centre of the debate.
Our problem is to prove now that competition policy can serve the people, that it must serve the people and that it already serves the people. There is broad consensus on this point within our committee but, from the moment when I, as rapporteur, had to highlight obvious cases that required a reassessment or a reorientation of competition policy or that, on the contrary, called for competition policy strongly to be encouraged, disagreements arose.
In its current, post-amendment, state, the report is characteristic of the European Parliament’s reports, which practically no one can, or wants to, read because they say absolutely nothing at all. I hope that, on at least three points, forceful ideas are reaffirmed in order to show the people that the European institutions are there to serve them.
Competition policy is divided into three broad areas: the fight against the formation of monopolies, the fight against cartels and the fight against State aid that is illicit or harmful to healthy and undistorted competition. I will take these three examples and I will propose forceful ideas to you on these policies, ladies and gentlemen.
Firstly, the fight against monopolies: the European Union’s policy has been admirable in its struggle against Microsoft’s abuse of its dominant position. My committee, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, chose not to support the Directorate-General for Competition in this fight. I call on you, ladies and gentlemen, to reaffirm the European Parliament’s support for the Directorate-General for Competition and for the Commission in the trial of strength they are conducting in relation to Microsoft.
Secondly, I will address the formation of these monopolies and the fight against cartels. Overall, the Directorate-General for Competition has behaved admirably. I am thinking, in particular, of the Vivendi/Hachette affair. I believe that, in an attempt to do things too quickly, mistakes were inadvertently made in 1999 during the merger between Rhône-Poulenc and Hoechst. We need to try to understand how these mistakes came about. We do not have the right to cancel the measures taken by the Commission, and I do not want this, but I am calling for a committee of inquiry to investigate what happened in order to understand how tens of thousands of employees and tens of thousands of small shareholders came to be ruined due to the Commission’s failure to carry out checks, despite the fact that it had committed itself to doing this.
The third point on which I am calling on you to intervene and to voice forceful ideas concerns the field of public aid. The Directorate-General for Competition and the 2004 report approve of this aid when it is consistent with the Gothenburg policy and the Lisbon policy. We must support the Directorate-General for Competition on this point. When, however, the Directorate-General for Competition supports the town of Charleroi’s giving generous subsidies to the airline Ryanair, I believe that it must be criticised because that kind of action distorts competition between towns, between businesses and between modes of transport in a way that is detrimental to the Lisbon and Gothenburg policies."@en1
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