Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-26-Speech-2-031"
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"en.20060926.3.2-031"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, may I too say how delighted I am to see you and thank you, Mr Barroso, for attending this debate.
For many years now we have been discussing transsectoral European legislation in the field of services of general economic interest. The European Parliament pronounced itself in favour of such legislation in 2001 and 2004, and the European Commission – which at the time was the Prodi Commission – did not take the matter further, putting forward the legal argument of the lack of legal basis and the political argument of the lack of the political majority in the Council needed to make progress. On this last point, the reference to Article 322 of the draft Constitutional Treaty illustrates at the very least, unquestionably, that there was a political agreement within the European Council to move forward.
Today, we are faced with a proposal for a directive on the internal market in services which partly covers services of general economic interest, a directive which many experts predict will not prevent numerous appeals to the European Court of Justice and which we have reason to fear will make it harder to achieve the aim of greater legal certainty in the field of the internal market in services.
Also today, as other fellow Members have pointed out, we are faced with a European Parliament resolution which will be voted on tomorrow and which does not in fact go as far as the resolutions of 2001 and 2004. For this reason we have incorporated a number of amendments aimed at clarifying things.
However, the real political development, I believe, is that in addition to the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, which has had legal experts draw up a proposal for a framework directive, the European Trade Union Confederation has also put together a proposed text. A number of associations – I am thinking in particular of the European Liaison Committee on Services of General Interest, which has an in-depth knowledge of these issues – have also drafted proposals of a legal nature which amount to saying: yes, a proposal for a framework directive is not unthinkable, and, moreover, must be consistent with the four principles that you mentioned in your introductory speech.
For this reason, Mr Barroso, on the basis of Article 192 of the current Treaty, we ask you clearly to move forward and not to content yourself with responding to us in a few months time with a new consultation paper or a new white paper.
I would like to finish on a more political point. I believe that we must not underestimate the genuine or imagined concerns of a number of our citizens who feel there is a flagrant imbalance between, on the one hand, the implementation of competition law which, in its general provisions, is a horizontal law, and on the other hand, the protection of services of general interest at European level. Also, as some Members have said, Mr President, the significance of a framework directive for the Council and the European Parliament is that it provides them with an opportunity to show the Commission and, ultimately, the European Court of Justice, what kind of general provisions they want for European services of general interest. I believe that this is in fact what is at stake politically in this whole debate. Though I wish the political majorities were different, they are what they are for the moment."@en1
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