Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-26-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20060926.3.2-023"2
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".
Madam President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, we all agree that such things as public local transport, refuse disposal, social services and the water supply are things that should be managed on a regional basis, and that is largely the line taken, in principle, by Mr Rapkay’s report, which I welcome, and which has taken on board much of what is in the Regional Development Committee’s opinion.
While demanding a commitment to subsidiarity, we also call for greater legal certainty where services of general interest are in conflict with European competition law, namely with regard to the law on subsidies, public-private partnerships, and, indeed, the definition of terms.
A Frenchman, for example, has a different concept of what services of general interest are from a Pole, a Swede or a German, and that is why there must be no single European framework directive on them of the kind that the Socialists want. We do not want the same standards enforced right across the EU. It makes no sense to dictate to the regions of Greece or the Czech Republic what they are to understand by services of general or public interest. It is unfortunate that the Left in this House have managed to get various references inserted into the text of the report that could be taken as pointing the way to that sort of framework directive, and I wonder just what they are driving at. Do you want an overarching framework directive that will make the areas of legal uncertainty more complicated than they already are, or do you want an insidious backdoor attack on the substance of European competition law as a means of forcing your socialist ideas about public services on Europe’s regions? Whichever of the two may be the case, we say a firm ‘no’ to it. Where there are legal uncertainties, they must be eradicated, issue by issue and sector by sector.
That, of course, means a lot more work, but I am sure in my own mind that only the sector-by-sector approach can do justice to the European ideal of subsidiarity in the single market in which we all share. This is not an area where Europe should lay down criteria of cost or quality. Defining services of general interest, funding them and organising them, must continue to be in the hands of the regions, for it is they that have political responsibility for them."@en1
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