Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-07-Speech-4-019"
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"en.20021107.1.4-019"2
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". – Mr President, thank you for giving me the opportunity to reply to all the Members that have spoken this morning.
The Commission is favour of liberalisation. I would like to make the distinction between liberalisation and privatisation. Privatisation is not the concern of the Commission. In fact, Article 295 of the Treaty says that nothing in the Treaty should have any impact on the ownership of whatever it may be. Member States' governments are free, according to the Treaty, to nationalise, de-nationalise, privatise, expropriate or whatever. Privatisation is not the concern of the European Union and is not the concern of the Commission. However, liberalisation is indeed our concern. Liberalisation means opening up to competition and it is my view that if such services of national interest, otherwise known as network services, are open to competition, the ordinary citizen stands to gain from that.
Mr Rovsing spoke on the Community patent and suggested that such patents should be expressed in one language only. He may be right but I know at least one Member State which would be strongly opposed to such a proposal. I wish Mr Rovsing the best of luck in trying to persuade that Member State that all patents should be expressed in English.
Mr Karas said
more speed rather than delay – and I cannot agree more with him. He also said that the stronger our internal market is, the stronger Europe's position in the world will be and, of course, he is right. Economic clout is necessary for political clout. That is one of the reasons we should all support the internal market.
He also agrees with the
the guarantee clause in the accession treaties about the internal market in its widest sense, encompassing energy, transport and so on, not just the areas under my portfolio. An important part of the accession treaties, the guarantee clause works for two years as from entry, but under the guarantee clause, measures may be proposed which go beyond this two-year period. We have the possibility, should the need arise, to impress upon accession countries the need for a period longer than two years. They should do whatever needs to be done to bring them into line with the internal market thus defined.
To Mr De Clercq, who also spoke, perhaps I may answer in the language which we have in common.
May I begin by agreeing with Mr Harbour when he said that Lord Cockfield played an important role in constructing the internal market. This is perfectly true. He added that this happened with the support of the British Government, and may I say that it is all the more regrettable that Lord Cockfield did not return to Brussels as a Commissioner for a second period.
Mr Harbour commented on services. Indeed, since our economies are roughly 70% service-based, he is quite right to raise the point. This point has also been mentioned by others. In reply, it cannot be right that companies are subjected to a number of requirements which they have already fulfilled in their home country. To do so would add considerable cost to doing business in the European Union and would not be compatible with calls for less red tape.
It is vital for Member States to press ahead with action to modernise and simplify their legal framework. In many cases, the removal of barriers requires much improved administrative cooperation between Member States or, where necessary, harmonisation. That action will necessitate involvement of Member States, and in the light of the report on services, the Commission intends to propose both a legislative initiative to remove unnecessary legal barriers, and also non-legislative actions to address non-regulatory barriers. The Commission will certainly keep this uppermost in its mind and intends to return to Parliament as the occasion requires.
I also agree with Mr Harbour that the transposition deficit, which is now creeping upwards again, is a most serious matter. May I appeal to all Members of Parliament to use such influence as they have with their home governments to stress the absolute need for a transposition deficit that is as close as possible, if not identical to, the 1.5% which was set as an aim by the European Council.
Mrs Berger mentioned the need to look after and improve the mobility of employees. I agree with her and that is one of the reasons why the Commission is at pains to see to it that in the area of pension funds, when employees contribute to a certain pension fund in their own country, they can then go and work in another country and contribute to the same pension fund, retaining their rights to tax deductibility on their contributions.
Recently, there was a case involving a citizen of Finland who contributed to a pension fund which was not Finnish. The tax deductibility of the contributions was not allowed by the Finnish authorities. After recourse to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, this error was redressed and we now have the possibility of retaining such fiscal advantages. That is a good thing in defence of the mobility of employees.
Mrs Berger also drew attention, as did Mrs Wallis, to Article 95, which is one of the bases, if not the basis, of the internal market. There have been noises in and around the European Convention that Article 95 should be amended. The latest comments that have reached me on that point assure me that this is not the intention and that the Convention does not want to change Article 95, which would be a very bad thing.
Mr MacCormick drew my attention to services of general interest. It is obviously a general term but what is meant are public services which not only at national, but often also at regional or local level, have until now been shielded from competition."@en1
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"Schutzklausel"1
"mehr Tempo statt Verzögerung"1
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