Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-04-Speech-1-088"
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"en.20020204.7.1-088"2
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"Mr President, given the time constraints, I shall omit the congratulations which I had in mind. Mrs Ghilardotti, I, too, had noticed that many women have been involved in these reports, both your report and that on working hours, and both during the Belgian Presidency and within the European Commission. This is a good result, in my view.
Normally, I am not one for using big words, certainly not as long as a negotiation process is still running, but now that we have reached the end of it, I shall venture to use superlatives after all and refer to the achievement of both these agreements as historic.
To start with, it is very good that, after a long time, European labour legislation is now being laid down again. This fits in with the pursuit of a socio-economically ambitious Europe, as expressed in the Lisbon objectives, a dynamic and competitive economy with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. It is useful to stress the latter part of these objectives once again on the eve of the Barcelona Summit.
Historic steps are being taken in both areas. The directive on information and consultation of employees forms an essential recognition of the right of employees to be involved beforehand in a company’s important decisions, and this forms part of the mores and the traditions of the European social model.
Innovation in terms of economic activity is necessary, but it also requires a pro-active approach which also takes employee participation seriously. In the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, this is recognised as a fundamental right. This directive elaborates upon this as a right for all companies in the Union. A third step is required for, if we take this employee participation seriously, it should also apply to restructuring and changes in companies. The Commission issued a document on this subject recently. I welcome Commissioner Bolkestein’s presence this evening, for it is particularly important in my view for this discussion also to be held concerning other areas and for the matter of employee participation to be raised in other areas too, for example in the case of take-overs and mergers of companies, and also in Commissioner Monti’s competition policy. In my opinion, this should be a very important discussion in future for, there too, employee participation should form a part of the tradition and routine.
As for drivers’ working hours, I should like to concur with what Mr Hughes said about the case which is running in Luxembourg. I should like to emphasise once more that a definition of the pseudo self-employed, devised at European level, can play a vital role in solving problems of this kind, because we do not have a European definition of this at the moment. However, the Member States, including the new countries, use their own definitions."@en1
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