Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-22-Speech-2-027"
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"en.20070522.6.2-027"2
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"Madam President, there are some good things in this report – the importance of the transatlantic relationship, the progressive reduction of tariffs on transatlantic trade, the importance of trade liberalisation and the fact that protectionism leads to unemployment – and yet the report is practically schizophrenic on customs duties. On the one hand it commends what it calls ‘the success of the EU’s customs union’, despite Europe’s long-term economic decline compared to Asia and the US, and on the other hand it calls for the progressive reduction of tariffs.
We must make up our minds. Trade barriers are either good or bad – they cannot be both at the same time. The fact is that customs unions are a 19th-century Bismarckian concept and they have no place in the 21st century. It is time to abandon the EU’s common external tariff and to create a European free-trade area.
The report also commends the European social model and the updated Lisbon Agenda, yet we all know that the Lisbon Agenda is a dead letter. We talk about it but fail to put it into action, while EU competitiveness slips ever further behind our competitors. I well remember our British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in this very Chamber, asking the question: What sort of social model is it that leaves 20 million unemployed across Europe? Answer: the European social model. I also remember a visit to Singapore when the then Prime Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, was asked by our colleague Mr Corbett why a prosperous country like Singapore had such poor social benefits and unemployment pay. Mr Goh Chok Tong replied: ‘We find that when we pay people to be unemployed we get a lot of unemployed people, so we don’t do that’. That is the wisdom of the Orient, and we would do well to bear it in mind.
There is only one way forward for a competitive Europe: we need Konrad Adenauer’s ‘bonfire of the regulations’. We need major reductions in taxes and in social and employment costs. Then, perhaps, we can start to compete in the world."@en1
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