Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-04-Speech-2-072"
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"en.20060404.7.2-072"2
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"Mr President, the enlargement of the EU by the addition of 10 new Member States was something that we wanted for cultural, economic and political reasons; I, as a German MEP, spent years arguing in favour of the project and trying to win people over to it.
Public acceptance was dependent on the Member States having the right to limit the free movement of labour in line with the conditions prevailing on their own labour markets. It was asserted in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs that the failure of massive migratory flows to manifest themselves meant that the transitional arrangements guaranteed by treaty had to be abolished forthwith.
To that I say that the situation as experienced in such Member States as Germany, Austria or France is quite different. Wherever markedly higher rates of pay per hour apply, and wherever social security is guaranteed, there you will find migrants, and they need to be controlled, with illicit working and fictive self-employment being prevented. The effect of continued flows of migrants to countries with high unemployment is neither to create new jobs nor to make businesses more competitive.
Even though this report is only an appeal rather than being legally binding, it could be misused to put certain countries in the dock, to whip up sentiment against them and to mount campaigns calling on consumers to boycott goods from them. That has indeed, already happened. Those who try to drive a wedge between the old Member States and the new ones imperil the concept of the EU being more than just a free trade area.
I have helped to put forward some compromise amendments and am grateful to Mr Őry, our rapporteur. Let there, then, be consideration of the curtailment of the transitional regulations, but let it be done on the basis of detailed analyses of the national labour markets. Regulations should also be drafted to ensure that workers from the new Member States are not put at a disadvantage vis-à-vis those from third countries.
What we need is for decisions to be properly thought out. Global competition demands of all the EU’s Member States that they create the conditions for it, by, for example, reforming their social security systems. This sort of posturing does no more than risk leaving our single European project by the roadside."@en1
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