Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-26-Speech-2-040"
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"en.20060926.3.2-040"2
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"Mr President, services of general interest are at the heart of the European social model. Mr Barroso may well have said that in his first sentence, but he went on, in the same breath, to praise the efficiency of the market – rather than solidarity, universal access or fundamental entitlements – as the primary motive for such services.
What the public expect of the European Union, though, is the certainty that the services they need in order to live will be provided as a guaranteed and fundamental right, and universally, that is to say without regard to their social status or where they happen to live. We can gain people’s trust only if services of general interest are intrinsically protected against market interests and kept separate from them. I have to tell Mr Barroso that, if he tries to combine public services with the efficiency of the market, he will end up dissolving the core of the European social model. You, Mr Barroso, may well rejoice at the demands made in this House for a sector-by-sector approach that would give you all the power you need to deregulate basic services, but it is abundantly clear from the latest examples given in your communication that it redefines basic social services as economic activity, so what you are doing is reinterpreting the definitions given in European court rulings.
Your proposals on health services, in which patient mobility is to be treated as more important than basic care, have their own tale to tell; they show how illusory is the belief that the market can guarantee fundamental rights. The only way to guarantee these services of general interest is by means of an explicit framework directive, one that does not impose the rules of European competition law on basic services, these being the sort of services that ought, self-evidently, to be able to receive state subsidies, which exist in order to guarantee basic amenities and ought not to give priority to the demands of the market. Those services of general interest that are economic in nature can also meet basic needs, and universal access to them, too, must take precedence over the interests of the market.
It follows that any such framework directive must go hand in hand with the services directive, precisely in order to guarantee that protection. That, as things stand at present, is the only way to find a solution, for, as a consequence of the services directive, services are already on the market, and so this is a fictitious debate staged by the Right, who believe that one can only look backwards and that the matter would be resolved either by adopting a sector-by-sector approach or by not having a Europe-wide definition at all."@en1
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