Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-05-Speech-2-139"
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"en.20000905.10.2-139"2
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"Mr President, let me start with a quotation: ‘Unregulated mergers, based merely on dominant capitalist concerns, have a devastating effect on the Union's social cohesion. That face of the European Union is unacceptable to men and women who wake up one morning to discover that the company they work for has changed hands and that they are at the mercy of their employer's economic strategy options. The effect on the lives of those people, their families and their entire region is traumatic and, let's face it, inhuman.
Among Parliament's various proposals, the idea of setting up an observatory for industrial change is of particular interest. In so far as such an establishment will be independent and will have appropriate resources to carry out its research, and its work is made public and can serve as a basis for democratic debate, it can make a powerful contribution to developing intergovernmental cooperation which, in this area of social policy, remains predominant.’ That is not a quotation from some irresponsible or lunatic left-winger.
I am in fact quoting our President, Mrs Fontaine, who made those statements at the Lisbon Summit on behalf of us all. Now, listening to certain leaders of the uptight right, here, today, I wonder if these honourable Members of Mrs Fontaine’s group really want to spend their time giving the lie to what our President said before the Heads of State and Government in Lisbon. Of course, Mr Chichester and Mr Plooij-van Gorsel tell us, respectively, to ‘leave it to the markets’ and ‘not pick winners’. We know the old refrain only too well, privatise profit and nationalise losses. My friend Steven Hughes has explained that the Socialists and the two other political groups tabling a joint resolution do not want a bureaucratic monster.
We do not want a new institution or agency but – as Mrs Péry, the representative of the presidency, says, and I welcome her too – a light arrangement, a light structure, which could coordinate the existing work. In fact, the Commission has plenty of documentation available, and Eurostat can provide very interesting statistics on industrial evolution in Europe and beyond. There are the national governments and research institutes. There must be no duplication of existing work but coordination of it and a report, at least every six months, which can be debated in the Council and in the European Parliament.
We do not want to be mere spectators of the progress of industrial and social change. We want to shape the future, and shaping the future does not mean fighting a rearguard action or useless protectionism, but accompanying change. We are for the new technologies, we are for the new economy, but we also want to help the old sectors adapt. Our aim is a pro-active policy. We want to anticipate change, because the future, and especially the economic future, is being built now."@en1
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