Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-13-Speech-4-119"
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"en.20030313.4.4-119"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I must unfortunately start on a note of difference between fellow Members, because I wish to express my regret that Mrs Figueiredo has been unable to resist giving priority to side issues rather than to the main one. The side issue in this case is the petty quibbling of the national opposition. On top of that, what Mrs Figueiredo is saying is not true, because the Prime Minister, the government and the local authorities have been persistent and tireless in this matter. Their actions in fact match the consensual way in which the Portuguese Members in this House have behaved, and this explains to a large extent the direction this debate has taken and much of the success achieved in terms of the compromise resolution, on which we will shortly be voting.
Let us hope that, especially where this Portuguese case is concerned, that of C [amp] J Clark, which has upset everyone in Portugal, the Commission will finally draw the conclusions necessary to bring an end to a problem that has been around for such a long time: that of companies chasing Community subsidies. I still remember an example that was renowned in Portugal ten years ago: that of Thierry Rousell, who successfully prospected – or so he said – in the Brejão region, sowed hope and then stole many millions of escudos. Even today the case has still not fully come to light or been brought to justice. These are longstanding problems, to which solutions will one day have to be found.
Industrial relocation and restructuring and companies closing down once they have received financial aid from the European Union are not new phenomena, but their scale and context has changed considerably. We know that companies’ motives for closing and then relocating are many and various. We are also aware, however, of the damaging effects of relocations, especially when they take jobs away from regions that have no alternatives. The recent case of C [amp] J Clark in Castelo de Paiva speaks for itself.
These decisions lead to high numbers of redundancies, thousands of jobs are threatened by the far-from-distant prospect of the mass redundancy of workers – those, that is, who have survived previous rounds of redundancies -, with extremely serious repercussions for the regional economy. To these consequences we can add all the indirect effects of the fall in jobs and orders for subcontracting companies, most of which are fragile small and medium-sized enterprises created as offshoots of the main project and dependent on them. Consequently, we cannot remain indifferent. We cannot ignore, or pretend to be unaware of the fact that in most cases, these businesses, especially in Objective I regions, benefit from Community financial aid and from direct or indirect financial aid from the Member States. Nor can we ignore, or pretend to be unaware of the fact, that most of the companies that close, relocate or seek to relocate are not companies that are suffering, and are instead success stories with high productivity rates and with acknowledged product quality. The decision to close is, therefore, a cruel one in social terms and is dictated purely by external economic reasons.
We must fully shoulder our responsibilities, bearing in mind that the European Union is the most significant player in the world in this field and in particular has to ensure that there is internal discipline in company relocations within the internal market itself. We therefore wish to express our solidarity with workers who are directly or indirectly affected. We feel it is unacceptable that a multinational company that has benefited from Community financial aid in the Member State in which it has decided to set up could breach the obligations inherent in this aid. We call on the Commission and the Member States to urge Community-wide companies to refrain from taking decisions that will harm employment unless due consideration has been given to all possible alternative solutions. We ask the Commission to look into the support mechanisms, at both national and Community level, from which the companies in question have benefited and which it distributes. We must all know what is happening in this area and that public opinion can also exert control and impose its own sanctions."@en1
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