Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-409"
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"en.20061025.29.3-409"2
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".
Mr President, I, too, wish to thank the rapporteur for her efforts, even though our group is rather less than satisfied with the final result that emerged from the committee, as a result of which I would like, this evening, to appeal to you all to rethink your position, even if only in part.
It is intercommunal cooperation, in the shape of intercommunal undertakings, that we see as the most important point, and I would like once more to make it clear – not least in response to those who have already spoken – that they have nothing whatever to do with the devolution of functions to third parties, but have to do rather with the municipalities deciding to perform services for the community. It is lack of funds in public coffers and an ageing and numerically declining population – particularly in rural boroughs – not to mention greater critical awareness of the issues and the costs involved on the part of the public, that makes this form of cooperation the best for many local authorities in Europe, and often the only way available to them of modernising the services they provide. So it is, then, that administrative services, water supply and drainage, playschools, schools and many cultural amenities are operated jointly, sometimes, indeed, across borders, examples of which can be found in the pre-school projects run together by French and German communities. Europe should not be putting this sort of thing at risk, but rather enhancing it, so let me therefore commend to the House’s support our Amendment 45, which is a compromise put together by Members from various groups, and which I hope will gain majority support tomorrow.
My second point has to do with concessions. I dare say that I am more sceptical about public-private partnerships than are most of you, but I do, all the same, think it wrong to send out the message that public-private partnerships are being promoted and then demand that concessions be put out to tender in the same way as contracts, the performance of which was, of course, the basic rationale for the PPPs being set up in the first place. I do not believe it is merely fortuitous that Parliament and the Council did not explicitly include concessions for services in the directive on the award of contracts, and I hope we will come to agree that what we do not want here is a requirement that they be put out to tender in the same way as contracts. Services concessions are something different and need to be regulated in a different way.
As for ‘in-house’, what the European legislator really should have done about this was to clarify the conditions. I do not regard a figure of 100% as sustainable. What is needed, I think, is threshold values, and high ones at that, which must then actually be complied with. It is, though, the legislators that should define them and not the ECJ."@en1
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