Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-11-Speech-2-021"
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"en.20080311.7.2-021"2
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"Mr President, President of the Commission, we still have a practical work programme for 2009, on which we could comment. However, it is apparent that no major strategic changes can be expected to the Commission’s policy strategy in the coming year.
It reads: the Commission wants to improve its communications task, get the idea of Europe across and raise citizens’ awareness of the Treaty of Lisbon. Would a referendum on the Reform Treaty not be the right way to involve citizens in this process? Do you really believe the voter turnout will increase when you continue merely to state how marvellously current policy is working and that we must therefore simply continue to pursue the existing concepts?
What many people experience in real terms is less social security, stagnating wage levels, serious curtailment of employment rights, rising prices for basic services in local public transport, health provision, energy and water supplies, education and child care – all of this when the profits of large enterprises are rising at the same time as these enterprises are threatening to relocate. The Commission talks about the importance of lifelong learning for employability, the importance of flexicurity – so that I am frequently left wondering where security is hiding, when the Commission puts forward legislative proposals.
The Commission writes about the need to strengthen competitiveness and talks here again specifically of those who are already strong anyway, who are to be freed from taxes – in other words, social responsibility. You refer to it as administrative burdens. However, if we want to have social, ecological and consumer protection standards, these must also be agreed and implemented! Nowhere do I find in your strategy the idea that perhaps the overall concept of the Lisbon Strategy, the concept of liberalisation and privatisation, simply does not work in the interest of the majority of people in many instances, and quite specifically not in the public services sector.
The foreign policy and foreign trade sector emphasises Europe’s important role in the world in terms of peace, security and stability and talks about the priority of multilateralism and partnership. Your paper states that the Doha Development Round remains a top priority. However, it contains nothing that shows how the EU wishes to contribute to the success of the development round. Instead, emphasis is placed on the familiar regional and bilateral free trade agreements, which for this reason make hardly any headway because they just do not meet the requirements of developing and emergent countries.
Moreover, the Global Europe foreign trade strategy is purely a strategy for promoting foreign trade for European conglomerates, which care little about regional and sustainable economic, social and ecological developments in partner countries. It contains nothing about small and medium-sized enterprises, yet you wonder why states like China are fighting back with dumping measures. Indeed you even wanted to continue cancelling the largely inadequate anti-dumping instruments!
The Commission talks about improving operational and conflict management capability in third countries. After what has just been said, I would ask you: does it not make much more sense to fight the social, but definitely the economic, causes of crises and conflicts as well?
Change your strategy so that we can win citizens’ support for a European Union!"@en1
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