Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-14-Speech-2-037"
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"en.20060314.6.2-037"2
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".
Mr President, I see that this afternoon we are to debate the European footwear sector. I use that as a restructuring example, since I live in Northampton, at one time the capital of British shoe-making. During the last 40 years the seven or eight big household names, the labour-intensive shoemakers in Northampton, have declined to barely one, while all the town’s engineering firms have gone. At the same time, the town has doubled in size and there are twice as many jobseekers, but there has been no unemployment problem. The rate in Northampton is currently a little less than the UK average of 5.5%, which is the lowest in the EU – Sweden and Denmark apart.
So, how did we do it? How did we restructure? It was not done with EU schemes: this all began before the UK joined the then EC. Nor were EU funds involved. We did it by ourselves, by making our town attractive to the service sector. Barclaycard, for example, which is one of the biggest credit card companies, has had its headquarters in the town for a very long time.
I know you do not like this self-help approach: it does not lend itself to EU interference, rules and regulations and the grand handing back of a country’s own money via unelected regional assemblies and development agencies. Only yesterday Mr Schulz complained that the elected MEPs in this House did not have as much say as the Council and the unelected Commission.
So let us cancel Lisbon mark 2 and let national governments and local councils of Member States do the job they were democratically elected to do."@en1
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