Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-13-Speech-2-063"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20010213.3.2-063"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioners, this is an oral question addressed to the Commission. Several months ago, the President, Mrs Fontaine, addressed the Lisbon European Council with concerns, to quote her, “the devastating effect [of unregulated mergers] on the Union’s social cohesion”. She urged the Heads of State and Government, and I shall quote her words once again, to “ensure that, before such mergers can take place, a serious assessment of their social impact is carried out so that the necessary accompanying social measures can be taken”. In so doing, Mrs Fontaine was highlighting the major problem of how to reconcile the necessary flexibility in businesses with the necessary safety of workers?
Within my committee, we were unanimous in our discussion of this oral question and also on a motion for a resolution that is now before us. I must point out that a further motion was tabled by the Liberal Group. As we are of one mind with our liberal friends, who voted in favour of the first resolution and, above all, in favour of the committee’s question, we think there has been some technical hitch and that our liberal friends did not receive proper information. Do not, at any rate, see this as discord. It is a matter we are going to sort out. Until now we have worked in perfect agreement, and that includes with our liberal friends.
Commissioners, we impatiently await your responses.
Since Lisbon, Mr President, restructuring has intensified further. We now hear that there are more than three hundred mergers every year. Every new day brings further sources of anxiety for employees whether in the sectors of what is curiously termed the ‘old’ economy, which is the bulk of the economy, or in the new information technology sector.
In this respect, the Nice Summit sent out some very positive signals. Overcoming the thirty-year deadlock on the European Company Statute, including the section on employee participation, and the adoption of the social agenda, illustrated the importance that the European Council attaches to improving the situation of the European Union’s workers.
The request we would make of the Commission through this unanimous oral agreement – and let me stress that there was unanimity within the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs – is that they use this new political will as a firm basis to truly guide their proposals.
It is our honour, therefore, to ask the Commission to make some specific commitments. First of all we want better provision to be made for the social effects of restructuring. How, for example, do you plan to use the new European Industrial Relations Observatory, to be operated by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions in Dublin, which this great House, the European Parliament, was so dedicated to creating? We would like you to undertake a reassessment of the existing directives on social matters with regard both to their record of implementation and to the new challenges presented by their restructuring.
We urge you to propose the necessary revisions wherever they are needed, particularly in order to have stricter scrutiny of workers’ rights to information and consultation and as far as possible to bring forward the provision of information to the social partners in the restructuring process.
In this regard, we would appreciate the Commission’s immediately proposing, now, not in 2002, as announced, revision of the current directive on the European works council, a directive which itself stipulated it would be revised after a few years. The time for that has now come. We also urge you to revisit the directive on collective redundancies in order to incorporate the procedures needed to prevent the requirement to inform workers being contravened.
Finally we would like to see the internal procedures for competition policy within the Commission being amended in order to take greater account of social factors. We know that Mrs Diamantopoulou is not completely averse to this idea. Well, “not completely averse” is a polite way of saying it, as I am in fact fairly sure that she is in favour of the idea. Would it not be only natural, when a firm asks Brussels for permission to go through with a merger, for the Commission to ensure that the minimum requirements for the information and consultation of employees as laid down in Community legislation have indeed been respected.
These, Commissioners, are our demands, which have a symbolic value as far as public opinion is concerned, a justified value as far as the employees are concerned, and, if I may say so, are useful as far as the economy is concerned, for how is it possible to manage a knowledge-based economy without the employees being involved?"@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples