Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-13-Speech-1-041"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000313.2.1-041"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I would like to extend warm thanks to Prime Minister Guterres for his account and the clarity of this account. My main question relating to this is, what is actually new? Of course, we have in place macro-economic cooperation, the so-called Cologne process, and we have a process for employment, the Luxembourg process. What will this Summit actually add to this?
What is new, of course, is social protection. This, in fact, has hardly been dealt with at Summit level and is, in my opinion, a very important topic of discussion. I think that it is easy to identify the lessons which can be drawn from the Luxembourg process and to declare them applicable to social protection. I do wonder why public health cannot be mentioned in this respect. It is, after all, a key element of social protection which is rather in crisis and which, in fact, costs a great deal of money and is essential to a great number of people. However, apparently, the Council is not ready to discuss it at this stage.
Mr Barón has caused me some concern by saying that the programme which your are presenting, Mr President, is in fact a socio-democratic programme. I went over your speech again in my mind and I think, in actual fact, that it contained one point which had a strong socio-economic bias. It was the point in which the macro-economy is arranged such that it will lead to employment. It is, of course, a fact that a sound macro-economic policy will automatically result in an improvement in the employment situation. We have experienced this. But on the other hand, the sound rule of macro-economics should not be misused by pinning it down too much. Indeed, you will then end up in a situation which a great many economies under socio-economic and socio-democratic rule have experienced – and are still experiencing – where eventually, employment becomes the victim of bad macro-economic policy. This should not happen. I do hope, therefore, that the Prime Minister does not suggest abolishing the macro-economic policy which we have pursued over the past couple of years and which has been very successful – or at least changing it such that it is no longer effective.
Finally, Mr President, I have a problem with the Portuguese Presidency’s documents and also to some extent, but less so, with the Commission’s documents. It is their defensive nature. We have a few countries in Europe, including Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland, which rivalled the United States in terms of sound performance in the field of employment. So it is possible for Europeans to match this. There are other countries which appeared far less capable of doing this. It is then far more sensible to find out why some countries or regions are doing so very badly, rather than saying that we are underperforming compared to the United States. I think that, overall, this is not the case at all, especially if we take into account the fact that the internal market has only been in operation since 1 January 1993, which is a relatively short time."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples