Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-060"
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"en.20061115.3.3-060"2
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"Mr President, may I start with an observation as a francophone, which is that when Mrs Le Pen of the French extreme right and Mr Wurtz of the French extreme left spoke, they both drew exactly the same conclusions. Perhaps they should get married!
Today we have cause for celebration, a little bit of sadness and a little bit of hope. The reason for celebration is that we have actually got a services directive, which is indeed a step forward. I too would like to congratulate both Mrs Gebhardt and Mr Harbour on the work they have done. I think it should be called the Gebhardt-Harbour directive.
I am also happy that the European Parliament played a very strong role in this, and would like to congratulate the Finnish Presidency, Mr Pekkarinen, and especially Mrs Satu Mäkinen, who has redefined what a tough Finnish negotiator can be.
The reason for my sadness is the following. I think the atmosphere in which we conducted the debate on the services directive was a little bit poisoned. It showed traces of nationalism and protectionism, and a hint of xenophobia, much as Mr Lehtinen has said. We talked about the Bolkestein directive and the Polish plumber etc., and at many times were working to reduce the scope of the directive instead of pushing it forward. That may be a little sad, because it meant we had lost a little bit of mutual trust.
Why hope? The reason for hope is that we can live with this directive. I think the key is that the Member States can now start implementing the directive and the European Parliament can follow up this implementation. I also hope that the European Court of Justice will interpret this directive in a liberal sense.
I would like to end by saying that we should re-establish the trust there has been between the Member States, and remember that in 1957, 50 years ago, we defined this Union as being based on four freedoms, which are the free movement of services, goods, money and people."@en1
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