Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-157"
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"en.19991027.5.3-157"2
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"Mr President, the European Union must have a competitive industry, one that creates wealth and thus jobs.
This means that within the Union, we must arrive at a real coordination of fiscal policies and at a definition of comparable social norms for everyone, so that we no longer experience the distortions of competition that are still too marked today. This also means that we must prepare our companies to support globalisation and to adapt to it. We might wish that this globalisation did not exist, but it does. It is up to us to manage it in such a way that its negative aspects can be avoided. In this context, we find ourselves facing the difficult problem of relocation. The problem is difficult because obviously it eliminates jobs in Europe, difficult because the people vilifying relocations today are the same people who are, at the same time, demanding that Europe should multiply its investment in developing countries and should make it as easy as possible for products made in those countries to enter European Union territory.
As far as the Michelin affair is concerned, since everyone is talking about it, despite our all saying that it is not the subject under discussion, on the day the Michelin redundancies were announced, Pirelli was doing the same thing, on just the same scale, but nobody is talking about that. Michelin today consists of 82 production plants, 48 of which are in Europe. I would be very interested to know how many car manufacturers, including those in public ownership, or tyre manufacturers, including those in semi-public ownership, still have such a major presence in Europe today and have not already quietly relocated, sometimes with the assistance of governments, including left-wing governments.
Today, we should tell it like it is. Michelin has, it is true, reduced the number of its jobs by 25,000 in twenty years but, I would like to remind some people, these are 25,000 job losses due to levels of productivity which are comparable in all sectors of industry, and particularly in the car and tyre industries. These are 25,000 job losses, only 186 of which have been redundancies. So for goodness’ sake, let us stop trying to find scapegoats for the way industry or restructuring is evolving.
People are telling us to just look at the profits being made on the stock markets. Well, excuse me. Do look at the profits made on the stock market, but look at all the profits for all businesses for last year or the last two years, and let me remind Mr Wurtz that he, or rather his friends, are members of a government which does nothing to stop profits being made on the stock market."@en1
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