Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-04-Speech-4-041"
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"en.19991104.4.4-041"2
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"Mr President, figures for unemployment and poverty in Europe are still disastrous, with 60 million people living below the poverty line, 9% unemployment and 25% unemployment among young people. It is not what you might call a positive result, especially if you consider that the slight upturn in 1999 was due, primarily, to an improvement in the economic situation in which neither governments nor the European Union played any part. You might even say that, in France, the creation of jobs in retail was achieved in spite of government policy.
To tell the truth, reading the two Menrad reports, one cannot help thinking that the European Union is attempting to offer first aid, even though it is its own policy which is largely responsible for the social troubles affecting tens of millions of Europeans. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam, Brussels has had official, full and legal access to a new area of interference in social and employment matters. Indeed, it cannot be repeated often enough that it is its ultraliberal internal policies and ultra-internationalist external policies, its cult of the opening of frontiers and of the almighty market which have brought our economies to their present plight.
A number of guidelines proposed by the Commission may seem positive. Surprisingly, one can even find common-sense proposals in them for a voluntarist family policy. But the good ideas are limited to the chapter headings, whilst examination of the detailed measures reveals the true nature of the Union’s action on employment. This action is just another pretext to extend the jurisdiction of Brussels to areas where its intervention can be nothing other than harmful – social protection, retirement, wage policy, taxation. We will be spared nothing: harmonisation, unification of legislation, alignment to the lowest bid in social terms. We can expect loss of job security, the erosion of working conditions, widespread social decline. It is indeed time for a change in policy."@en1
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