Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-14-Speech-1-036-000"
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"en.20110214.13.1-036-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, here in the European Parliament, we have been debating the Services Directive for a long time, and we have expressed many concerns in our debates about how it should be implemented and how we can ensure that service providers have free movement within the European Union. This was an important piece of policy. That is why we, as Parliament, decided that we not only wanted to make the legislation, but that we also wanted to monitor how the Services Directive is actually transposed in the Member States. It is in our interest that the directive be transposed properly, correctly and well. The European Commission also agreed to help us in this regard. I would therefore like to thank Commissioner Barnier, who has provided us with valuable information in this connection.
We have particular concerns about four specific areas, namely, the evaluation procedure, the points of single contact, administrative cooperation and the scope of the directive.
On the first point, I have the following to say. Mutual evaluation is one of the core items where we, as Parliament, and I, as the then rapporteur, said actually, we are opposed to this, as this means an awful lot of bureaucracy in the Member States. I am also hearing from the Member States today that there are indeed complaints about the bureaucracy. In that regard, however, I would quite simply like to make it very clear to the Member States once again that they were the ones that wanted this, not Parliament! They inserted it into the legislation and, as such, they should take the responsibility for it themselves even if, for example, local communities are beginning to discuss what Europe has done to them again.
On the question of the second point – the points of single contact – I would say that this is the answer to what we have done in the political sense. We said quite clearly that the principle of the Services Directive is not the country of origin principle but the country of destination principle. That means that service providers must respect the law of the State in which they operate. That makes it all the more important that they obtain from the points of single contact not only the information about the laws that they have to respect, but also the necessary assistance to enable them to really apply that law properly and consistently in the Member States. I therefore find it very regrettable that, while these points of single contact have been set up in many Member States – although not all of them as yet – this has only been done in a very unsatisfactory way. In some cases, they are merely Internet portals. That does not satisfy us, the European Parliament – there needs to be much more behind these points of single contact. There need to be people behind them who can provide real assistance for the service providers in this area. One issue here is the language that is provided. It is not enough to offer the local language and perhaps English. In my view – and Parliament has spoken in similar terms – it is important for service providers that the language of the neighbouring county is also spoken. I say this with one eye on our Polish President – in the border area between Germany and Poland, German should be offered in Poland and Polish in Germany so that the information and assistance are actually really good, so that even the small businesses, which are not all competent in English, can really get involved in cross-border activities.
Administrative cooperation is another important point and it is an area where we are heading in the right direction. In this regard, the Member States still have an awful lot more to do in the area of cooperation and of the education and training of officials, so that this system can be really well used.
Finally, we come to the scope, in which connection I would like to make it quite clear, once again, that we excluded all services of common economic interest from the scope of Article 16. I expect the Member States to respect that. If they want to include these services in the scope of the Services Directive, that is their right, but in that case, they must not sweep it all up as part of the Services Directive; rather, it is their own political statement of intent and something that they should also assume responsibility for themselves. That is what I demand of the Member States in this context."@en1
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