Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-04-Speech-2-193"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060704.28.2-193"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am very grateful to the Commissioner for his remarks. They went straight to the heart of the debate that we must conduct on the future of European industry.
Azambuja is an individual case, but it represents many others. It is symptomatic of a wrong choice of course in European industrial policy. There is no disputing that we must remain competitive and that rationalisations are part of this effort, that productivity growth is necessary and that, if higher productivity leads to job losses in one company, these must be counteracted by the creation of new jobs elsewhere or in the same region through innovative investments. That goes without saying, and we must make targeted investments to ensure that it happens. What our policies must not and cannot condone, however, and what we Socialists in Europe will fight, is the brutality with which multinational giants deal with the lives of human beings.
In the course of my political career, as the mayor of a German town, I experienced the cold, calculating way in which companies played off national, regional and municipal administrations against each other when it came to investing in locations. The imagination of company boards is boundless when it comes to obtaining public investment support as a location incentive. This is matched only by their complete lack of imagination when it comes to shouldering their social responsibility in times of crisis. This is precisely what we are now observing on the part of General Motors.
I am grateful to you for what you have told us. You will check whether European funds went to that factory; if they did, the company must stay at its Portuguese location. That is good news. But what happens then in Portugal? It will be the same scenario we witnessed only a few months ago when the Swedish workforce was played off against the German workforce of the same combine. Whoever lowers welfare standards furthest, whoever allows the lowest wages, wins the day. Fewer social rights and less pay is the basic criterion for location decisions. This is a form of capitalism that the people of Europe do not want, and we must fight it.
If, as in my country, a company – not a car manufacturer in this case but Allianz financial services – makes a profit of EUR 4.4 billion, then decides to sack 8 000 highly qualified staff to maximise its shareholders’ returns, that is not only immoral – I cannot expect morality of a capitalist, nor do I – but also socially irresponsible. We must consider how we can use national and European legislation to curb that kind of corporate policy. In the case of large groups of companies with global operations, these are, of course, corporate decisions taken by the group, and we have no influence over them. But the impact of these corporate decisions affects the whole of society. For this reason, we believe that the application of democratic principles to such decisions is part and parcel of economic democracy.
Hedge funds buy up companies as assets nowadays. We live in an economic world in which major funds buy large companies, de-list them as quickly as possible in order to reorganise them as quickly as possible and sell them on at a profit as quickly as possible. The company, its location and the entire region are thus reduced to commercial goods. That cannot be the economic future of Europe! Accordingly, the way in which the European economy is restructured will determine the future social cohesion of Europe.
In the second half of the 20th century, the idea behind the European Union, the idea behind the single market in which we live today, was that economic and technological progress should go hand in hand with social progress. We have reached a stage today in which maximisation of profits goes hand in hand with diminishing social security. If we do not halt this trend and return to what we did successfully in the second half of the 20th century, namely combining economic growth with social security, we shall forfeit the social stability of our European societies – and social instability is always at the root of political instability, which leads in turn to a loss of security. For this reason, the restructuring of companies in Europe is a challenge to which we must respond on the social level."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples