Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-03-Speech-3-164"
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"en.19991103.12.3-164"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this is not the first time that I have taken the floor in this House to speak in my capacity as a citizen and would like to say that, for me, the most important thing is to speak as a citizen on behalf of the citizens. And normally I have spoken on reports which affected the citizen’s main concerns: the issues of the third pillar, that is, justice and internal affairs.
To sum up, we want Europe to speak with a single voice with regard to the internal market and to act as a model – why not? – in international relations. And to this end we need a clear legal framework, a legal framework for the internal market, with principles, which radiates into other policies and by means of which the citizens may have a clear idea of what has been done over the last 50 years and which now, through these initiatives, we believe will have an absolutely guaranteed future role.
But today, reminding you of something I said here during the last part-session – after Tampere the European citizens have received the message that Europe is no longer just a market – I would like to say loud and clear that, with this strategic document on the internal market which has been presented to this Parliament and which I am speaking about today, the citizen is going to have a clear idea of the coherence of that market and the fact that the ultimate and main protagonist of that market is the citizen. The ultimate and main protagonist of the internal market is the citizen and the small and medium enterprise.
Why is there any confusion? It is clear: the internal market is a wonderful achievement, a success story, without any doubt, but it is not perceived as such by the citizens nor small and medium-sized enterprises. Today the impression is still that the internal market is the concern of the multinationals, the major companies, the bureaucrats, Brussels, the technocrats who are far from the concerns of the ordinary people, where many initiatives pile up on top of one another without order or harmony, with no guiding ideas, which, in many cases, are perceived as one more nightmare in the onerous task of living in a developed Community or having a small or medium-sized business.
I believe, Mr President, that it is not only a matter of refuting the idea that everything bad in the Member States comes from Brussels and everything good comes from the governments. It is not only that. It is something that goes much further. Until now, there has been a lot of very good legislation with very clear consequences, but it has been done without a strategy. Now the strategy is here and the importance of this strategy is fundamental if we want the citizen to see that the internal market is not just a matter of legislative acts which relate to the four freedoms, but that it affects them fundamentally.
Therefore, congratulations to the Commission and, naturally, we offer our unconditional support to this idea which seems to us, in Parliament, to be very interesting and deserves to be developed. Now for our wishes. Firstly, this Parliament wishes to be closely involved with each and every step in the process which is planned for the internal market, with the selection of strategies, the selection of second level objectives and the selection of specific objectives.
We also wish to be closely associated with the balance given to legislative and non-legislative actions. We are in favour of non-legislative actions, since often legislation is not necessary given that sometimes “soft law” is enough, but these initiatives should not cause us to lose sight of the fact that we must avoid the false idea of harmonisation and we have to avoid legal insecurity, as well as false expectations about the internal market. The same thing happens with the choice between harmonisation and mutual recognition. We also believe in the need to establish a fair balance and Parliament hopes that its points of view will be fully taken into account.
And with regard to the citizens’ more specific ideas, we are very much in agreement with this general strategic objective, but we want the citizens to understand their rights better and above all to be able to exercise them in a clear and concrete way. We want more efficient and clearer systems for the settlement of disputes which would be better if they were extrajudicial as well as judicial, and all the better if self-regulation policies are created to discipline those markets.
And, of course, we want the four freedoms to be fulfilled. We want the fourth freedom – the free movement of persons, which stands between the internal market and the policies of justice and internal affairs – to be a reality.
We want, above all, Commissioner, to insist on legal security and, to that end, we are calling upon you to develop an initiative – which is lacking in your strategy – for the creation of a genuine administrative procedural law for all types of infringement procedures, for all the procedures which involve the citizens."@en1
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