Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-18-Speech-2-331"
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"en.20081118.29.2-331"2
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"Madam President, thank you for all these interesting interventions. Maybe this is another mission impossible to try to collect and respond in a satisfactory way to all Members’ different views on the legislative and work programme. They range from GMOs, as we heard, through fish to the WTO and the whole financial crisis. So I might not have the time or the possibility to respond in a fully satisfactory way to all your detailed questions.
Let me finally say that in this Legislative and Work Programme you will see that we have for the first time identified communication priorities and since this is my portfolio I want to underline this and remind you all that we proposed four items to become joint communication priorities for next year: the EP elections of course, energy and climate change, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and growth, jobs and solidarity, meaning that the package also covers fighting the financial crisis.
We are already working together to prepare work on these priorities and I can assure you that we will contribute to the work that Parliament is doing in preparing for the elections; tomorrow I will talk to your Bureau’s working group on communication to see how we can help and support and back Parliament’s work plans for communicating the EP elections.
So that will be very important work for us. If we want to keep credibility and legitimacy, we have to mobilise voters to make sure that they cast their vote in June next year. With a combination of good policies and good communication I think we can actually face the difficult year ahead with at least a little confidence, and if we work together, the confidence will be even greater.
I would first of all say that there has been nothing like ‘business as usual’ since we entered this crisis. By my side you see my colleague responsible also for much of the response, as well as Mr McCreevy behind us here, and they will know better than anyone else that we have had to work on this from the very first moment. I would also say the Commission has responded to the financial crisis with unusual speed. I remember that in the past we congratulated ourselves on responding within three months to one of the oil spills that we had and we thought that that was a kind of record, but this time we actually managed in 24 hours to get proposals on the table and to adopt important proposals. So I think that there has been nothing like business as usual and we will not see anything like business as usual from now on. We have to continue to respond to a recession that we have already seen the beginning of. So that is absolutely clear.
I also think that all your interventions have illustrated the need to get the balance right. To get the balance right in terms of environmental concerns as well as the social issues – all of these have to be covered. But why do you believe that what you find in the strategic initiatives like the report on the Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs and proposals beyond 2010, a European framework for recovery, financial markets for the future package supervision, will not contain the social issues and cover the whole sustainability criteria? Of course it has to reflect that balance, and that is what we will work on, as well, in completing it with the very detailed proposals that will have to come on-stream from now on. So that balance, and also getting the balance right between regulation and letting the market work, is crucial to us and something that we are fully aware of.
I think that this also will affect our credibility because it is only when we also fill out these strategic initiatives, the things we have listed as strategic and priority initiatives, with the very concrete follow-up and implementing measures that we gain credibility and that we can also continue to play a leading role within the G20 or in the IMF context or affecting the rest of the world on energy and climate as well; we will get this credibility from delivering what we have promised in this work programme.
We have appreciated very much the dialogue that we have had for a long time now with the different committees in Parliament and the kind of overall political debate that we have engaged in and I want to thank you very much for that. I think that helps us to deliver. It helps us to also bring the right details to the lists of proposals.
But, as you know and as is clear also from our work programme, this is a very peculiar time because it is a kind of transition, with a new Parliament, a new Commission; and, with the elections to Parliament coming up next spring, you have also asked us not to go on delivering when you can no longer receive it and do something meaningful with it.
I must just mention one more thing, and that is SMEs, because several of you have mentioned the small and medium-sized enterprises. Of course they will be absolutely key to any success in dealing with the financial crisis, so we will deliver, we have already produced a SME business act and of course there is a follow-up, an implementation of the business act.
The same is also true for the social package that we presented. Now it is a matter of the implementing measures. So if you do not find every proposal in every area in this particular proposal, that does not mean that we have stopped working on it or that we will not come back with detailed proposals, but the balance is absolutely crucial.
And when we speak with one voice, it helps if we have one message as well or a coordinated message in everything we do and I think that will remain crucial for all of us."@en1
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