Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-094"
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"en.20020411.4.4-094"2
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"The Fatuzzo report on the sustainability of pension systems in the European Union offers a fascinating insight into how Brussels manages to take over an issue, as if it went without saying that it was competent to do so, when there is not a single word in the Treaty on pensions, which are legally – there is no doubt about it – the sole responsibility of the Member States.
It all starts, as usual, with cautious Commission communications, seeking to show that the sustainability of pensions has a more or less direct influence on certain European competences. Similarly, in the conclusions of various European Councils (Lisbon, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Laeken) ‘brief phrases’ are slipped in to legitimise what the Commission is doing. Then one day the idea has taken sufficient hold for the Barcelona Council in March 2002 to call – to general amazement – for the average retirement age to be increased by five years. This is bordering on Europe interfering, pure and simple, without any democratic debate having been held.
Admittedly, most of the ideas expressed are more or less along the right lines. But this is an essential tactic in this method of competence creep: for the transfer of competence to be invisible or painless, the policy line expressed must, first, be indisputable."@en1
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