Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-15-Speech-4-082-000"
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"en.20111215.5.4-082-000"2
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".
Madam President, Mr Vice-President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to thank the European Commission for presenting the 40
Annual Report on EU Competition Policy, while at the same time expressing my gratitude to my colleagues in the relevant committees, namely Mr Ashley Fox for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and Mr Marinescu from the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats), for their contributions to the drafting of this year's statement on competition policy by the European Parliament.
We have worked hard within a tight schedule to agree the report presented by the Commission this year so that there is a stronger link between the reply from Parliament and the Commission’s proposal. I am extremely grateful to my fellow Members, especially the shadow rapporteurs in the committee, for their commitment in ensuring that this was possible today. The reason for this sometimes somewhat more pressing haste was the fact that we have obviously included a point in paragraph 21 that is contentious on formal grounds. For this reason, I intend requesting that we should postpone the vote, but only the vote, until February, so that we can clarify this point for all our fellow Members in the interests of a tidy report.
This is the 40
anniversary of the Commission’s Annual Report on EU Competition Policy and it is evident that European competition policy, the work of the European Commission in the area of competition law and state aid control is a unique success for the single market and its consumers. That is why I believe that the European Parliament should show more appreciation for this work by the European Commission from time to time, focusing more on the link between the control of dominant market structures, on the one hand, and direct gains for consumers on the other. We managed this very well at the event in Poznań hosted by the Polish Presidency a few weeks ago to mark the anniversary of competition policy and consumer protection, where it was plainly evident that consumer protection and competition policy are two sides of the same coin. Thus, we have three major focuses in the area of competition policy in the European Commission this year.
On the one hand, in this report, which was approved by a very broad majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, the European Parliament is seeking even tighter controls on the state aid afforded to banks in the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Mr Almunia, we appreciate your efforts, but believe that some banks were rescued from bankruptcy at that time that experienced difficulties not just because of the Lehman Brothers collapse, which is why we would expressly request that you look very closely at this issue and examine critically the criteria used by the Member States in awarding state aid in the banking sector. Of course, this is still a little early and new problems are arising all the time. Nonetheless, we wanted to make a clear appeal to you in this regard.
The second focus is on the energy sector, where consumer protection plays a major role. We want to see the oligarchy-like structures found in the energy sector come more under the control of the European Commission because consumers often get the impression that they have very few rights in relation to the energy providers and the structure of energy supply in Europe is still not as competitive as we would like.
Thirdly, the report deals with legal issues in relation to the guiding principles and Council Regulation No 1/2003, which provide the basis for the European Commission’s decisions on fines. Our particular wish here is that this proposal in relation to what you call mono-product businesses, in other words small and medium-sized enterprises, should be implemented soon.
We welcome the excellent cooperation with the European Commission on the restructuring of these reports, which should make them somewhat easier to read and to explain to others. We hope that we can succeed in focusing on the value of competition policy for consumer protection and for Europe’s citizens."@en1
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