Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-103"
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"en.20000411.5.2-103"2
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"Madam President, the Lisbon Summit will mark a milestone. Following on from Luxembourg in 1997, when Europe revealed its joint responsibility for employment, the European Council has just outlined a new economic strategy, intended to make the European Union not only the most competitive and most dynamic knowledge-based economic system in the world, but also a model in terms of employment and social cohesion.
“The novelty of this summit is that it dealt with the entirety of economic and social policy.” This is a quotation from Belgium’s Liberal Prime Minister. Along with him, the President of the French Republic, and the Heads of Government of Austria, Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg have endorsed the Lisbon conclusions. Some political forces within this Parliament nonetheless appear to wish to turn the Lisbon Summit into some sort of Socialist International ‘happening’. How else is one to interpret the refusal of the PPE and ELDR Groups to negotiate a joint resolution common to the main political forces within Parliament? Some conservative and liberal ayatollahs seem not to want to hear anything about a macroeconomic and monetary policy of benefit to the European social model. The untrammelled free market seems to be their only god.
Yet the market economy must necessarily have a social dimension. Here is a riddle. In Lisbon, who was it that said that the citizens of Europe are looking to the European Council to give shape to a social Europe? Who was it that said that, for European citizens, I quote, “unemployment wrecks lives and societies for entire generations and, even though it is starting to fall, unemployment remains the main concern”? That “the across-the-board return to economic growth means that we can do things today which were impossible yesterday”? That citizens are scandalised by “untrammelled capitalism, whose relocations, social dumping, ruthless exploitation of the disparities between the social and fiscal legislation of the Member States and remorseless pursuit of profit at the expense of working men and women”?
These are the words of Mrs Nicole Fontaine, the President of this Parliament. The Group of the Party of European Socialists also supports Mrs Fontaine in her declaration made in Lisbon to the effect that, I quote, “The European Parliament is committed to the social model in all its aspects”. The President has our support when she asks the European Council to, I quote, “introduce balanced rules on company mergers within the European Union”; and says that there should be “a ban on any mergers that do not comply with binding European legislation on prior notification and consultation of workers”; “that, before such mergers can take place, a serious assessment of their social impact is carried out”, and when she points out that “unregulated mergers, based merely on dominant capitalist concerns, have a devastating effect on the Union’s social cohesion”.
The Group of the Party of European Socialists agrees with the President, when she demands an observatory of industrial change, and a fairer distribution of income between capital which enables and work which produces. In short, the Group of the Party of European Socialists endorses the conclusions of our President, whom we congratulate on her fair and courageous statements.
Parliament would appear ridiculous if it voted in favour of the joint resolution tabled by the PPE and the ELDR, who seem to wish not only to disown our President, but also to disassociate themselves from both President Prodi and the Conservative and Liberal Christian Democrat Prime Ministers who endorse Lisbon.
I therefore advise all the Christian Democrats, all the Liberals and all the Democrats in general who want to see a social market economy, to vote in favour of the resolution proposed by the Group of the Party of European Socialists. We wish to combine economic efficiency, quality of life and social protection. We want sustainable development in all these aspects."@en1
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