Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-034"
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"en.20070904.3.2-034"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, many members of the public might well find today’s debate rather odd: after all, the internal market has been around for more than 15 years and a lot of people have become quite used to it. Yet even after all this time, there remain some astounding shortcomings, due in certain cases to protectionist behaviour by a few Member States. Certain things have also gone wrong over the years. Members of the public – consumers – have less freedom of choice and the market is by no means a level playing field; it might be that for big companies, but for SMEs it most certainly is not.
We all share the view — and I hope I speak here not just for Parliament but also for the Commission and the Council – that the internal market is not an end in itself. I should like to quote one of the great founding fathers of the Single Market, Jacques Delors, who talked about three key principles – competition, to stimulate; cooperation, to strengthen; and solidarity, to unite. The last of the three has been somewhat obscured down the years. For us as Social Democrats, solidarity and cohesion in the internal market are very important.
My final point is this: an effective market implies effective safeguards and consumer protection. Only by putting these in place can we build the confidence that everyone is reminding us about. Recent years have seen an increase in the number of products that contain hazardous substances or pose a risk: Chinese toys are merely the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of products are the subject of complaints. So that is where our task lies, and your task too Commissioner: we need to use our package of market-control measures to win back people’s trust; we need to take action and not simply leave things as they are."@en1
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