Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-23-Speech-1-113"
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"en.20001023.9.1-113"2
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"Mr President, I would first like to apologise for having arrived late. Secondly, I would like to welcome the work done by Mrs Riis-Jørgensen, with whom I have had an excellent and constructive relationship.
And obviously, Mr President, although my opinion refers to the Commission’s 29th report on competition policy, it is inevitable at such a time that we will look to the past, but for no other reason than in order to learn for the future. It has been said – and I am only going to pick up on what has been said so far – that competition is presently the big word in our society, it is the great catalyst for the development of our society, particularly of our European society.
In short, we see that industry entered into competition following the Treaty of Rome, that this competition was also extended to services on the basis of the single market and that, with the euro, it extended to financial services. We see that now, driven by international competition and by the new technologies, the large telecommunications sector is being dealt with. Finally, even royalty sectors, the real enclaves of sovereignty, of State royalty activities, are coming under competition policy.
Therefore, Mr President, we need to recognise that, with Member States that are ceasing to be producers and becoming regulators, the Commission policy needs to change, and in this sense, this report is part of that important development.
In its opinion, the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market did nothing more than highlight something which has been said and repeated: that we need clear rules, because this is the only way of knowing what the rules of play are. We cannot leave everything to the market with no regulation at all. What we need are clear rules and – I stress – rules that are of a sufficient level or category. In any event, interpretations or interpretative communications are no good.
And also, of course, that the Commission’s policy, which we welcome and support in the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, should not be shaped, in this process of decentralisation, to the detriment of small and medium-sized businesses, to the detriment of the citizens.
I will end with a phrase from John Rawls, the philosopher of law: inequalities are always justified when they increase the level of the system and support the weakest without affecting fundamental rights. Commissioner, knowing how far this goes in the universal service, in public service, is the great challenge for the Commission."@en1
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