Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-29-Speech-3-082"
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"en.20020529.6.3-082"2
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"Mr President, a warm welcome to Professor Monti, who appears to be deep in thought at the moment. My heartiest congratulations to Mr Konrad on the huge amount of work he has done and the considerable effort he has put into this report.
The main aim of the new regulation is to increase the level of competition across the board with a view to improving consumer well-being and safety and the functioning of the internal market. In order to achieve this last goal, it will also have to provide protection for dealers and encourage the small and medium-sized businesses operating in the European automotive sector. We therefore agree that the interests of consumers should take first place, and there are a huge range of possibilities within the common market. Increasing competition between sales distributors and in the after sales market and increasing competition in the manufacturing and distribution of spare parts must therefore be seen as positive.
We must not, however, overlook the fact that, if the measures laid down in the new regulation are interpreted too rigidly or too loosely, they could reduce legal certainty and lead to forms of concentration in distribution
location, in after sales services and in spares production, causing a considerable number of small and medium-sized businesses to disappear from our market and impacting negatively on employment and the expected benefits for consumers.
For these reasons, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats has adopted an extremely favourable stance; it endorses the idea of a transition period until 2005 and a review clause. Naturally, we hope that the other groups will take the same stance.
The implementation of the idea of protecting consumers by reducing car prices, the effectiveness of which is, as yet, completely unproven, will have to involve an evaluation of what happens during the transition period. The necessary conclusions will be drawn from the results which emerge and the new regulation will then be applied accordingly. During that period, dealers will, however, have the opportunity to invest, taking into account any restructuring of industry, and this would, in any case, be less harmful than a regulation which might work against the consumer and which would certainly penalise a large number of small and medium-sized businesses operating in the car dealership sector."@en1
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