Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-122"
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"en.20001024.4.2-122"2
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".
Unbridled competition has become the latest neo-liberal fad. The principle of market rules as the sole form of social regulation tends to do away with man and his creativity as individuals in the economy and the productive process and, more importantly, is indifferent to man’s prosperity and only interested in the welfare of enterprise.
Everyone knows that, even if the rules of competition are transparent and apply to everyone, not that this ever was or ever will be the case, not everyone has access to those rules on equal terms, with the result that the familiar law of the jungle applies, might is right and monopolies rule OK.
Sometimes, when the consequences of this policy cause an outcry, state intervention, aid and other economic and fiscal incentives come along and go some way to restoring the situation.
Intervention does not even break the surface of the capitalist system and often supports selected companies and businesses. However, it is not these “deviations” that are being targeted in the desperate attempt to abolish state aid; its purpose is to increase the profits of strong companies and consolidate their position on the market without any danger from new competitors.
The less developed regions of the EU, the less developed sectors and the poorer social classes know that, without state intervention, the development differential will increase steadily at their expense. They know that, without a strong, productive and efficient public sector, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They also know that the economy is being restructured and the public sector sold off not for their benefit but in order to support big business and increase its profitability.
Selling off the nation’s silver is one of the quickest ways to weaken the grass roots factor and minimise the means at its disposal. In other words, apart from increasing profitability, it also hands big business an important political weapon to combat grass-roots demands.
We find the constant pressures and concomitant institutional measures, such as the proposed state aid register and scoreboard, unacceptable. There is a danger, once the EU is safely in control of large state aid, of its turning its attention to small-scale aid on the pretext of the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises. Big business is showing, in the choices it is making, that it is seriously worried about the possibility of competitiveness controls by the Member States, not by the Commission of the EU.
The intolerable situation being forced on workers by the choices made by large companies and the EU is already causing widespread reaction. The number of demonstrations against “globalisation” and the rule of the uncontrolled laws of the market is increasing rapidly. Attempts to erode measures to protect workers still further, the attack from all fronts on the rights which they have fought for, in conjunction with attempts to minimise the specific weight of the public sector and the balancing function which state aid can exercise, do nothing except increase grass-roots dissatisfaction and leave workers no choice but to fight and resist."@en1
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