Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-207"
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"en.20020313.9.3-207"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, a slow recovery in economic growth seems to be taking shape in both the United States and Europe, although the timescale and stability of this recovery are still uncertain. Above all, the extent of the recovery already seems to vary greatly across the various sectors involved, and it is intertwined with restructuring and modernisation processes, which may be supported by heavy public investment and unacceptable protectionist measures, as is the case with steel in the United States.
At Barcelona we must therefore reject any attempt to weaken collective bargaining and to remove from the Charter of Fundamental Rights a major part of its content.
The problem that the European Union is always faced with is how to prevent such a contradictory and non-uniform move out of recession from coinciding – because of a wait-and-see attitude of European governments and the Union – with a widening, and not a narrowing, of the innovation and competitiveness gap that already penalises Europe in comparison with the United States.
For this reason, the report I am tabling highlights the urgent need to adopt a proactive policy – at the Barcelona summit, let us hope – which is, above all, in line with the Lisbon objectives, a policy mix that makes the social agenda adopted at Nice an integral part of a coordinated economic and social policy centred on the objective of increasing the active population and achieving full employment.
This seems even more essential if one bears in mind the need to abide by the constraints of the Stability and Growth Pact, particularly that of keeping budget deficits down to within 3 per cent of gross domestic product, which only leaves rather modest resources available for a counter-cyclical economic policy in the individual States. We therefore stress that it is not a question of concentrating new powers in Brussels but rather of making very selective choices and coordinating state intervention in order to achieve a critical mass, creating positive synergies of public intervention and private investment at a European level.
It is a matter, then, of choosing. In the report we uphold the need to prioritise the revival of a policy of investment instead of an across-the-board reduction in the tax burden, except for further exemption from labour costs.
In the area of public and private investment, we insist on a resumption of the Lisbon strategy, which today, especially in some countries, is making disturbingly slow progress. This means giving high priority to channelling Community resources and national investment into strategic sectors like research and innovation, lifelong learning as an integral and inseparable part of the structural reform of the labour market, and the creation of a European network of infrastructures and services, starting with telecommunications.
In addition, Community projects need to be better coordinated with governments’ economic and social policy guidelines, and not only coordinated better but in good time – by the summer, in this case – so that they can affect the decisions of the national parliaments, which must be informed of the initiatives of the competent European Parliament committees in due time and be involved in them.
We must not just hope for coordination but promote it too, for instance by proposing – through the Commission – forms of open cooperation between different governments on common projects concerned with research, innovation, lifelong learning and active ageing policies, the latter being a prerequisite for achieving a reform of social security systems that is not disastrous for workers’ pension rights.
Social dialogue must also be involved in this policy mix, based on the need to set out the guidelines and financing methods for the continuing education policy. The participation of the social partners in defining a modern welfare state, turning it into a decisive factor in sustainable development leading to full employment, is one of the cornerstones of the European social model."@en1
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