Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-10-Speech-2-093"
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"en.20070710.7.2-093"2
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"Madam President, it is the policy of my party, the British Conservative Party, to reinstate the opt-out which was agreed at Maastricht and to withdraw the United Kingdom from EU employment and social legislation. I trust that my Conservative colleagues in this House will have the full support of their political group, the PPE-DE, in implementing this policy.
Turning to the report, I was astonished to read in recital C that ‘the EU is not only a free trade area’. Anyone who knows the first thing about international trade will know that the EU is not a free trade area at all: it is a customs union. They will also know that the customs union or
is a 19th century Bismarckian concept which should have no place in the 21st century. All the evidence from around the world shows that free trade areas work, while customs unions work far less well. Indeed, the EU is the only group of developed countries still operating in this outdated mode. If this House wishes to convert the EU from a customs union with political pretensions into a modern effective free trade area, it will have my full support.
The Commission’s proposals on modernising labour law and our first draft report show a belated recognition of the huge damage that intrusive and inflexible labour market rules have done to European economies. They made the first tentative steps towards liberalisation. However, amendments passed in the Unemployment Committee reverse the direction and turn the report into a regressive socialist wish-list of deeply harmful proposals.
Today’s amendments restore the balance, and so long as they are maintained the report’s timid measures are better than nothing and deserve our support. Paragraph 2 quotes the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That Charter was signed off twice by Tony Blair, yet after the Brussels summit of 22 June he came back like Chamberlain from Munich declaring he had protected his red line and that the charter would not affect UK labour law. Could the Commission please give me a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer? Is Blair’s opt-out legally defensible? I look forward to the Commission’s reply."@en1
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