Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-149"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000516.7.2-149"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, as you say, this is a new procedure and I hope that it helps to establish in Parliament the importance of the conciliation procedure in achieving legislation to which Parliament has aspired. I want to say today how much I enjoyed the support and the great help of the rapporteur and the Chairman of the Employment and Social Affairs Committee.
Mrs Smet, our rapporteur, was President of the Council of Ministers when the original Working Time Directive was enacted. Mr Rocard is a former very well-known French minister and indeed Prime Minister. We had an exceedingly strong team which Parliament was able to deploy in the negotiations with the Council and I am extremely grateful to both of them. Parliament should be extremely grateful to both of them – especially the rapporteur for all the work that she put into this negotiation.
The delegation also had a great responsibility in this negotiation because we had many difficult decisions to take. We did not achieve everything that we wanted to achieve as a Parliament, but I think we went a long way towards helping all those people who are now going to be included within the Working Time Directive to see some progress so that they can eventually get to the goal that we were all trying to achieve.
If we take, for instance, the junior doctors, we discover that Parliament originally wanted a six-year period in which to achieve the 48 hours. That was never likely to be negotiated with the Council, but we were able to make substantial progress from the Council's original proposal of 13 years. Indeed, we finished up with a nine-year period. Only in extreme circumstances will governments be able to go through a procedure to justify an extension of that period of nine years. The interesting thing in this aspect is that we are making real progress on reducing the time of work for junior doctors. As many people will be aware, today, many junior doctors are working 72 hours in some countries. The progress that we are making is that in the first three years, the junior doctors' hours will be reduced to 58 and over the following two years to 56 hours and 52 hours respectively. We see that the junior doctors are, in fact, going to get a great benefit from this extension to the directive.
We also were able to clarify the position regarding the classification of mobile workers. The case was argued that, for instance, somebody driving a lorry for a large retail store should be included in retail-type legislation for working time, and only genuine transport workers are now going to fall exclusively within the transport sector. That, I think, was another major achievement for Parliament in this negotiation.
We move on to the fishermen who were greatly concerned by the application of this directive to their working life because they felt they would not be able to operate properly within that system. In all honour to everybody concerned in the negotiation, the Council and all Members of the delegation, they have made real progress and I recommend the outcome of the conciliation process to the House and hope they support it."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples