Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-18-Speech-1-177"
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"en.20070618.17.1-177"2
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".
Madam President, first of all, I should like to pay tribute to the absent rapporteur who has, as I see it, compiled an excellent document which meets with broad support in our committee. I should also like to give Mrs Kroes credit for what she has done, because, as Mrs Berès said a moment ago with very good reason, competition policy is not an end in itself, and I think that the European Commission, precisely under the guidance of Mrs Kroes, has launched a new pragmatic approach, something which we greatly appreciate.
Sometimes, people overlook the fact that competition rules are not there to bully businesses or thwart national governments. Competition rules are designed to ensure that the same rules and equal opportunities apply to everyone who operates in the internal market. These competition rules are therefore there to ensure that Europe can adopt a strong position in the world, in the face of global competition. As such, we should not compete with each other, but instead ensure that we create an internal market that functions well.
I too am a staunch supporter of the sector inquiries, and where energy policy is concerned, you can count on this Parliament’s support. I should nevertheless like to make one observation. At the moment, everyone in the Member States is busy preparing for the summit that is coming up this weekend, where once again, energy policy will feature as one of the new key areas on the agenda. One of the few positive points in the whole discussion. At the same time, I have noticed that, whilst the leaders of the national governments are saying that we should have a common energy policy, they are not prepared to stop protecting their national favourites. Perhaps they should practise what they preach.
With regard to state aid, as rapporteur for state aid for public services and for innovation, I can say that we have discussed this subject before. Actually, I cannot wait to see if there is a first assessment of the impact of these exemption regulations and if, more generally, an assessment is being made of whether state aid is suitable or not.
Finally, as for the matching clause, this too has been the subject of previous discussions. It is, of course, a problem if generous levels of state aid are made available outside of the European Union. At the same time, I would prefer to reinforce Europe’s competitiveness by other means. It is highly improper, to my mind, to start giving out generous levels of state aid and subsidies, whilst we have not yet sorted out other measures, including patents, making the labour market more flexible, opening up the market for services and many other measures of this kind; mistakes like this cannot be put right with state aid."@en1
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