Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-24-Speech-2-438"
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"en.20091124.36.2-438"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs wished to combine an oral question on the issue of relocations, notably of multinationals, with the examination of these two requests for mobilisation of the Globalisation Adjustment Fund because, in the Irish case, we recognised the difficulties and the contradictions that could arise as a result of using such a fund. At no time did any of the members of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs seek to hold hostage or to threaten not to help the Irish workers who are today in a critical situation due to the industrial strategy and the relocation of Dell.
We have simply observed that, in the case in point, even though President Barroso announced, on 19 September, the granting of a EUR 19 million aid package – which we are debating this evening – to Dell, or rather to the workers made redundant from Dell, in order to help them come to grips with the period of retraining ahead of them, the same day, in New York, Dell bought out Perot Systems, which enabled it to increase its share price. A few days later, on 23 September, Commissioner Kroes approved more than EUR 54 million in State aid for the creation of a Dell factory in Poland.
We have questioned both Commissioner Špidla and Commissioner Kroes on this matter. In a long letter, they tell us that they themselves envisaged Dell having two production sites to supply the European market. However, the way I see it, once Dell gave up one of these production sites, we changed nothing as regards the overall evaluation of the company’s strategy.
What conclusion can be reached? That, within Dell, none of the European laws that we talk about every day, concerning the rights of workers or of trade unions, is respected. It is therefore genuinely difficult to see the European Union’s budget ultimately being used – at a time when we realise the difficulty involved in the budgetary procedure, the difficulty involved in financing the recovery plan – to end up in this paradoxical situation in which we help to increase US shareholders’ rate of return on investment but put Irish workers, within the European Union, in Polish workers’ shoes. This is certainly not the philosophy that we supported when we supported the implementation of the Globalisation Adjustment Fund.
Commissioner Špidla is certainly not the only one at fault here, but I do believe that this case obliges us to look very closely at the conditions in which the Community budget is mobilised to support the strategies of large companies. This is all the more true since, in the recovery plan that was drafted under the current President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, one of the key measures announced in relation to employment was that of ensuring, as a matter of priority, that workers who had jobs kept those jobs.
Since the Commission was informed of Dell’s strategy concerning the existence of two sites, when the prospect of choosing between them presented itself, I believe that a more proactive strategy by the Commission should have led to a negotiation with Dell aimed at the transformation of the Irish site, given that the company’s strategy has been to turn a site manufacturing desktop computers, such as existed in Ireland, into a site manufacturing laptop computers, such as currently exists in Poland. It is our view that, if the Commission comes to the aid of multinationals in a scenario of this kind, we should have a more consistent right to speak.
I believe that, taken as a whole, these considerations should lead the next Commission – and particularly Mr Monti, in the mission entrusted to him – to draw up much more proactive proposals on the way in which we use Community funds at a time when we have to deal with relocations which, once again, pit workers, employees of one Member State against those of another Member State, and all of that as part of a multinational strategy that fails to respect the spirit of social legislation as we wish to implement it, around the concept of the social market economy."@en1
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