Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20061115.3.3-015"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, Mrs Gebhardt, we are disappointed at the refusal of the three largest groups, the majority of this House, to conduct a proper second reading of the Services Directive today.
Mrs Gebhardt fought to the very end, but this makes it all the harder for us to understand how she can describe as a great triumph for Parliament an outcome she recently said contained some points that were legally imprecise and unclear. Admittedly, the Council put us under great pressure by stating from the outset that any amendment of its text would result in the failure of the whole Directive – but this was the same Council that stated at its first reading that it had followed Parliament’s text virtually in its entirety. Sadly, however, it had not followed our text in its entirety, and a lack of clarity has crept into some points, mainly on issues surrounding social Europe.
This lack of clarity relates to the definition and exclusion of services in general and services of general economic interest in particular. It relates specifically to the exclusion of social services, and it relates to the recognition of the collective agreements negotiated by the social partners. These are not trifling matters; they are the fundamental issues that were used by the opponents of the Constitution to obtain a ‘no’ vote in the French referendum. We could have taken the Council at its word when it emphasised time and again after the referendums that the new version of the Services Directive would fully respect social rights. Sadly, however, this is not the case.
It makes a difference whether I give the example of social services or content myself with an incomplete list, which leaves large gaps in the case of some Member States and thus ends up having to be decided by the European Court of Justice. It is incomprehensible how this could be accepted in the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection. After all, the rapporteur for this committee, Mrs Rudi Ubeda, who is incidentally a member of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, stated in her report on social services that these services differed greatly between Member States and that, consequently, a definition was needed. How is it possible to exclude in a way consistent with legal certainty a sector that is not properly defined?
Sadly, however, the committee paid no further attention to this issue, but instead merely reaffirmed its reluctance to cause the Council any problems. Consequently, in its haste to show obedience, it dispensed with its traditional right to conduct a proper second reading of the Services Directive. This is certainly no triumph for Parliament; on the contrary, it is a defeat – one that we shall regret for a long time to come.
Even the Commission statement does not change this. At best, it is binding on the present Commission, but it is not legally binding, since the interpretation of the law rests with the Court of Justice – as Commissioner McCreevy has reaffirmed today."@en1
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