Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-26-Speech-2-016"
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".
Madam President, Mr President of the Commission, the general interest, the public good, the common good, public services: these are all key reference points which, as the President of the Commission has said, are at the heart of the debate on the concept of the European social model.
We are touching here upon people’s daily lives, on their perception of the future and on our conception of society. Fundamental values, such as equality, solidarity and democracy, are at stake. The issues are too important for us to deal with by means of fuzzy definitions or unsatisfactory compromises.
My group wishes to emphasise three aspects that require clarification. The first is the relationship between public services and the rules governing the internal market, in other words the provisions on competition, public procurement and state aid, not to mention the powers of the Commission and the Court to monitor and sanction perceived abuses.
In our view, we need a radically new legal basis that will allow public services to exist in Europe outside the logic of the market. It is true, as Mr Barroso and Mr Lipietz have reminded us, that the Treaty gives precedence to the provision of public services in cases where such provision conflicts with the rules of competition. It also recognises that national governments have the right to define general interest, but it is the Commission and, in the final analysis, the Court that determine the extent to which derogations may be made. Consequently, a country that is not considered to be anti-liberal, namely the Netherlands, has been brought to book for having committed, and I quote, ‘a manifest public-service error, because the subsidised social housing cooperatives counted among their tenants households that were not socially disadvantaged’. The truth is that this exemption regime is effectively tending to whittle away at public services.
This brings me to the second point I wish to make, namely the extent of our ambitions in the realm of public services. In our view, these services should quite simply cover the fundamental rights that everyone has in equal measure in this twenty-first century, namely education, health care, housing and decent living conditions, child care, information, culture, transport, telecommunications, postal services, energy and water supply, sewage and waste disposal and other needs that have become compelling, such as access to credit. Services in these areas must therefore be governed by the imperative of socially effective delivery without being subjected to the pressure of competition.
One third and final aspect needs to be highlighted, and that is the link between subsidiarity and the European integration project. As has been said, experiences of public-service management, of property structures and of funding methods vary from one country to another. It must be the sovereign right of each country to make these choices, with all their implications.
So do we or do we not need a framework directive? The debate on this issue has begun in our group, and I, for my part, would say ‘Let’s go for it!’ Let the Commission prepare such an instrument on the basis of the principles I have just restated. Some might object that this approach is incompatible with the rules of the Treaty. That, in fact, is exactly why we want to change those rules.
I propose, Madam President, that we put this question at the top of the agenda for the great debate that has been announced on the future of Europe, and we shall see what Europeans really think about this matter."@en1
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