Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-10-Speech-3-190"
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"Mr President, thank you for your message. I am going to try, without claiming to respond in detail to each one of you. I am sure we will have the chance to meet up again. I will start my answer with what the first of your speakers, Mr Schwab, said when he pointed out the initial ambition that we should revive and remain faithful to, namely, the social market economy. He added, and I agree with him, that we appreciate each of these three words: social market economy. This is important, and naturally, the Treaty of Lisbon includes these three words and adds to them the ambition of very strong competitiveness.
I would like to say something more specific about the issues relating to the social dimension, to which I am also committed. Mr Triantaphyllides and Mr Hughes mentioned them at the very start of your discussion, as did Mrs Gebhardt and Mrs Turunen. Mrs Turunen, we have had debates on this subject and adopted positions that, I might add, are not necessarily the ones reported in the newspapers. In my opinion, such a debate within the College is normal, absolutely normal. In fact, the opposite would be abnormal.
For there are 27 of us with different views, traditions and nationalities, and by working all together, we are united in these proposals. We are working to find the centre of gravity of the European general interest for proposals that will subsequently be debated by you here in Parliament and in the Council of Ministers, so that they can be supplemented or improved.
We have therefore had debates, which is normal, in order to strike the right balance between the economic freedoms laid down by the treaty, freedom of movement and the legitimate freedoms and rights of the social partners, particularly with respect to collective actions.
I think it is only right that employees, just like businesses, have a clear and reliable framework in which to work.
This will therefore be the spirit in which the Commission’s measures are coordinated. We will ensure, on the basis of the new strategy for implementing the Charter of Fundamental Rights, that the rights guaranteed by the Charter, including the right to bring collective actions, are taken into account. The Commission will implement to the letter the horizontal social clause laid down in Article 9 of the treaty by carrying out a prior in-depth analysis of the social impact of all these legislative proposals on the single market. In any case, I remain in favour of inserting, where necessary, a provision specifying how collective rights will be guaranteed in the context of the new legislation.
In other words, this will involve assessing, for each individual case, the need for such a clause. This is a subject which we are going to debate with you over the next few months in order to, if possible, further improve the Commission’s proposals. This will also be the case, Mrs Vergnaud and Mrs Auconie, for the quality framework which President Barroso has committed himself to regarding services of general interest.
I would also like to tell Mr Grech that the proposals on consumers are yet to be completed; we are working on this with Mr Dalli. You are right, Mr Grech, to warn against the fragility of the internal market: nothing is set in stone. That is why we need this ownership, this support from citizens, to consolidate this internal market in a lasting way, because it is an opportunity; it should be an area of opportunity much more than an area of constraint.
Mrs Gebhardt and Mr Tarabella, you touched on collective redress. We will not abandon this issue. It deserves to be genuinely explored, as a number of debates, here in Parliament and also in the Commission, have shown. My three colleagues Mr Dalli, Mrs Reding and Mr Almunia, are working on this, and they will draw conclusions from the consultation that we have just launched on the introduction of collective redress when the time is right, and as soon as possible.
I would also like to say to Mrs Comi that I agree with her on the link that we must establish between the Single Market Act and Mr Tajani’s communication on industrial policy. We are working on this together, particularly in the area of standardisation.
Mr Salvini mentioned the regions and his own region in particular. However, I should like to express my firm belief that you should take the debate that we are starting here, as normal, to the regions. I am going to send this document in the 23 languages of the Union to every national elected representative, in every single one of your countries. We are going to send it to the regions, to the unions, and to the professional and business organisations, so that this debate is as decentralised as possible. Whilst listening to Mr Salvini, I also cast my mind back to a major commitment made by the then President Delors, at the very time when the single market was being created. It was a commitment to cohesion policy, of which I remain a long-term advocate, in order to prevent any regional disparities in this internal market. These things therefore go together.
Honourable Members, it is, in fact, ambition that underpins this Single Market Act, a highly competitive social market economy, and to achieve that, our conviction, and my conviction in particular, is that – I repeat – achieving competitiveness and growth requires the help of every citizen, every business and every community.
Mrs Thun Und Hohenstein mentioned this debate; she is attached to it, and particularly to the forum idea, which we owe to her. Every year, we will organise this forum on the internal market and update the top 20, that is to say, the twenty areas in which real progress has been made. I hope that we will not have the same ones again and again for five years, that they will change, and that we will be able to eliminate some and make progress, but in any event, we will organise this forum.
I would also like to echo what Mr Abad said about the external dimension. Without a doubt, we have to be strong within and strong to set out to conquer other markets, to meet other needs in the rest of the world, without being naive, and with a desire for openness and reciprocity. My colleague, Mr De Gucht, also said some very powerful things yesterday, which I agree with, in relation to this requirement for reciprocity that we should have in our dealings with the European Union’s major partner regions and countries.
Finally, a word to echo what Mr Kožušník said earlier on, when he asked us to be brave. Yes, Mr Kožušník, I will lead this debate with all the strength I have, but I cannot lead it on my own, everywhere, in every single country. I will lead it tomorrow in your country, since we will be in Prague together, and I will lead it to the best of my abilities in all the countries. We cannot succeed on our own; this is about working together. The 13 Commissioners who will commit themselves in February to delivering these proposals, will also take part with us, as will all the others. Parliament, the regions, the economic and social partners, and national elected representatives must get involved in this debate.
This document is not something you can take or leave, ladies and gentlemen. It can still be improved. We are of the mind that we can improve it, prioritise it and, above all, deliver it with you, because we urgently need to restore growth and competitiveness along with citizens and businesses.
This will not just fall into our laps; even though we have laws to make and frameworks to create, it is up to citizens, businesses and communities to seize the chances and opportunities of this internal market. That is the ambition. Of course, I would say to Mr Schwab and to many others of you that, at the end of this debate, we will definitely have to decide on more important or more specific priorities than the ones that we ourselves have been able to establish, even though we have already identified 29 or 30 main priorities out of 50. I would add that there were still many more ideas in Mario Monti’s report.
However, I would also like to state my agreement with what Mr Creutzmann and Mrs Corazza Bildt said earlier on. Somewhat echoing the analysis I made earlier on in my speech, they said that we should look at what is happening in many of our countries because of the crisis, because of a lack of understanding, because of this question, ‘What does the market offer us?’, which is met with the response, ‘Not a great deal’. This is creating a sense of fear and incomprehension and, behind all this, we are seeing a rise in populism and protectionism.
Indeed, the first victim of protectionism would be the single market. That is why we must, through action, through dynamism, through initiatives, oppose these protectionist attempts and temptations.
Mr Harbour indicated that this was a new commitment. Mr President, in my hearing on 13 January, I remember specifically saying that, for the five years that we were going to spend together, I would undertake to reconcile, along with some of my colleagues – because I am not the only Commissioner, there are probably 15 or 16 Commissioners who inherited a rather large proportion of the legislation – 1 500 texts which need to be applied and applied intelligently to the market.
One thousand five hundred texts! However, Mr Harbour, I did mention that I intended to work to reconcile citizens and businesses with this internal market, and you are right to stress the opportunity we can give ourselves with this debate and with the Commission’s proposals on a comprehensive and holistic action plan, to repeat Mr Grech’s encouraging words.
Mr Harbour mentioned the growth of competitiveness. You will find in this Single Market Act many practical proposals that we will be working on in the legal and tax environment for businesses and, in particular, for small businesses, the review of the accounting directives in 2011, a common consolidated tax base for corporate tax – my colleague, Mr Šemeta, is working on that – new strategies for VAT, and the interconnection of business registers.
Those are a number of practical proposals to simplify the regulatory, fiscal and financial environment of small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition to that, there is the digital agenda, on which I am working with my colleague, Neelie Kroes, who is working with great determination. There is also the retail sector and many other ideas that Mrs Handzlik touched upon earlier."@en1
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