Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-15-Speech-1-076"
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"en.20031215.7.1-076"2
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"Mr President, I think I can say, in line with the opinions expressed by Commissioner Bolkestein, that we have lost yet another opportunity to modernise the capital market, first and foremost through rules which can ensure greater competitiveness of European companies and thus more effective protection of shareholders.
We need to understand each other: I believe that calling this a takeover bids directive – as Mr Huhne said earlier - is an exaggeration. What we are doing here is acknowledging that there are different regulations and guaranteeing to the different countries that they can maintain protectionist legislation with regard to their companies, their national public or private market leaders. I believe that we needed to go much further, to decide whether to aim at an integrated, effective, competitive European capital market which would provide fresh opportunities for growth for the European Union, not least in the field of employment, or not to take this so-called ‘risk’ and remain in our current situation.
The rules, as proposed by the Council, eliminate very few of the obstacles that some States’ rules place in the way of companies’ competitiveness, with the result that I am sad to say that hostile bids – as are the norm in a mature financial market, in which capital is moved where there are thought to be efficiency margins to recover, in the interests of the companies and the workers of those companies and of other companies, in the interests of the consumers of products, goods or services – become impossible. There is also the risk that this crystallisation of the current situation will take us a step backwards. In Italy, where the current legislation – the Draghi law – is extremely open and effective from this point of view, we are already being asked to take a step backwards, and I would point out that we are not going so far in Europe in opening up to the competitiveness of companies.
I hope that, should this measure – which is not, I repeat, a takeover bids directive – be adopted tomorrow by Parliament too, it will generate genuine competition between legal systems and ensure that those systems in which takeover bids are penalised and obstructed pay the price for it through having their international investors ‘vote with their feet’. There are very few positive elements: recognition of the protection of the rights of minorities and the sunset clause - the idea that the debate on the issue can be reopened. Maybe for this reason alone, it is worth adopting this measure, which is not a European law on takeover bids.
I will end, Mr President, by saying that employment in Europe, the interests of workers and the unemployed, are to be protected by effective capital markets too. At the moment, we do not have them, and I do not believe that this directive will create the necessary conditions either."@en1
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