Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-140"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000517.8.3-140"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner Monti, on the subject of the proposal before us, I should like to make four remarks or observations on behalf of my Group, but not without first congratulating our fellow Member, Mrs Randzio-Plath.
First of all, I should like to thank Commissioner Monti for having had the courtesy to consult the European Parliament. A Commission directive has been referred to us, even though, I believe, it is not legally mandatory to consult Parliament, although the subject is clearly a crucial one. This leads me to reiterate the hope that the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference will propose subjecting all legislation on competition policy to the codecision procedure, thereby enabling us legally to work on a more equal footing.
My second comment concerns the actual purpose of this proposed directive. It has an extremely specific aim, which is to prevent, subject to monitoring by the Commission, any legitimate public aid to services of general interest being misappropriated to the benefit of activities which are themselves open to competition. Having said that, the problem is by no means easy to solve, as the previous speaker made clear. Indeed he states – and I would be curious to know Mr Monti’s response to this – that Internet connection does not, for example, come under the heading of universal service. I think that this runs quite counter to the objectives of the European Council in Lisbon, and that it is necessary, on the contrary, to have a comprehensive vision of universal service. One might go so far as to imagine, even if this is a matter for subsidiarity, that the Community as such should at least define the minimum standards of what the universal service may be. Otherwise we are heading towards a relatively chaotic situation.
Thirdly, I should like to know the Commission’s reaction to Recital No 4 of our report, in which the rapporteur and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs effectively ask the Commission to specify how important it considers services of general interest to be. I await the Commission’s response on the matter.
Fourthly and finally, there is one amendment, Amendment No 3, which is explicitly intended to exclude the broadcasting sector from the scope of the proposed directive. I think this amendment is an improvement on the current text. Paragraph 6 is a masterpiece of diplomatic language but is relatively incomprehensible. I should therefore like to see the Commission expressing its support for Amendment No 3 as proposed in plenary."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples