Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-17-Speech-2-014"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20060117.5.2-014"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, perhaps I might say, before I say anything else, that the behaviour indulged in by some of the dockers yesterday here in Strasbourg goes far beyond what is tolerable or permissible in political life. By all means protest and demonstrate, but violence and vandalism are out – they cannot be allowed and must be denounced.
Let me now turn to the matter in hand. In the past, we talked about clean waters and clean ports and campaigned for them. We enacted legislation on the subject, one example being the November 2000 directive on port waste facilities. If the port package belongs anywhere, that is where it belongs, in amongst the port’s waste; that is the right place for it. That being so, Social Democrats and many others will, tomorrow, reject this ‘port package II’ directive. Why is this so? The answer is quite simple. The Commission’s draft takes no account whatever of the realities of life in most of Europe’s ports; its intention of interfering in functioning, economically successful structures and using an enormous and expensive bureaucracy to impose on ports a competition that already exists in almost all of them, is intolerable.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is that what is at stake is a lot of skilled jobs; families and livelihoods are at risk, and that is what this is all about. I have not, so far, heard a single reason to justify putting these jobs at risk and needlessly jeopardising social harmony in Europe’s ports. There is no reason to do so.
We are told that the fundamental freedoms – which are constantly invoked – are not guaranteed in ports. There may be a few ports like that in Europe, but unremitting competition is a fact of life in most of them. It is only natural that there is limited space in most ports for those who want to provide port services, and by no means will every one of them get their chance at once, but that is far from saying that any one of them is discriminated against.
Let me give, as an example, a pedestrian area in the smartest part of a city. Not everyone gets the chance to practise his profession there either, but does the Commission want to do something like stipulate a tendering process in future, simply because a German hairdresser is unable to rent a salon on the Ramblas in Barcelona just when he chooses to? That is simply not on.
This is not just about Europe as a location for maritime business but also about how we Europeans measure up against the other continents. If we want to maintain our European social model, we cannot go presenting Asian businesses with European ports on a silver platter – and, by the way, our European ports are in any case much more efficient than Asian ones these days.
You, Commissioner, inherited this questionable package from your predecessor, Mrs de Palacio. Knowing that you are not the sort to go hunting for legacies, we suggest that you rid yourself of this one – we will help you do it. The sort of proposal we want from you is one that cannot, in essence, be seen as anything other than European. What is needed is a European policy on ports, and fair competition between them, along with a proper policy on the ports’ hinterlands. We have to get European ports to compete properly with the rest of the world. If that is the sort of policy you want, Commissioner, then we are right behind you and will gladly work together with you in producing one."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples