Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-07-Speech-4-005"
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"en.20021107.1.4-005"2
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". – Mr President, it is sometimes easy to forget what has been achieved since 1992. Many of us no doubt remember the sight of lorries being stopped at our internal borders, their loads inspected and paperwork stamped. The chances of winning a public procurement contract in another Member State were then about as high as winning the national lottery. Setting up a European banking or insurance network was virtually impossible because of different regulatory requirements.
Rules need to be transposed on time and correctly. We talk about biotech as one of the growth sectors of the future of Europe. But only six Member States out of fifteen have now transposed the directive on the patentability of biotechnological inventions. This transposition was due 18 months ago, so nine Member States have stepped out of line and are lagging behind in this area. Overall, the transposition deficit for internal market directives is moving away again from the 1.5% target set by the European Council.
We have our work cut out. I know that none of this is easy. Taking decisions will probably become even more difficult in an enlarged European Union. There is a real risk that the delivery gap will grow wider unless we begin to act strategically by putting the European Union’s long-term interests before narrow sectoral interests, which oppose change.
We have the strong support of our citizens and businesses. Next week, the Commission will publish the results of a major survey on ten years of the internal market. I can already tell you that the survey shows that 77% of our citizens and 84% of our businesses feel that the internal market has been a very positive force in their lives. They want the internal market to serve them even better in the future.
At the level of the Parliament, the Commission is eagerly awaiting the forthcoming report on the internal market strategy, for which Mr Harbour is the rapporteur. I expect the report to be ambitious and hard-hitting. The recent creation of the Competitiveness Council also represents a welcome opportunity to make progress.
Ten years after the removal of our internal borders, one year into the euro, and on the eve of enlargement, now is the time for a major new push to improve the internal market. I count on the Council's and Parliament's support to work towards an ambitious medium-term internal market strategy, which the Commission aims to present by next April. If we act decisively, the best is yet to come.
The cost of a telephone call was extraordinarily high, and the quality of service was often poor. Cross-border banking fees were astronomical. Consumers simply got a bad deal. Our citizens were continually frustrated in their efforts to obtain residence permits to live in another Member State or to have their professional qualifications, for example as a doctor, recognised.
More competition and productivity gains have helped to create many new jobs that would not have been created without the internal market. The Commission will soon publish figures on the employment gains and growth effects of ten years of the internal market. These gains have been achieved even though important gaps remain within the legal framework.
We face a choice as we look towards the future. The choice is between an ever more dynamic internal market, which will remain an engine for more jobs and affluence in both the old and the new Member States, or an internal market which fires on only one or two of its cylinders, and which will be increasingly exposed to corrosive forces. If we choose the latter, we might just as well give up on our Lisbon objectives.
A decade ago, there was much steam behind the internal market programme. Today, there seems to be far less appetite for taking difficult political decisions. Even during the last two years, when times were good, we have accumulated a delivery gap.
The Community patent, COMPAT, is perhaps the best example. How can the Council seriously say that it wants Europe to become the most competitive economy in the world if it is not willing to adopt this critical measure for innovation and growth? The Competitiveness Council will have another go at resolving COMPAT's problems next week, but my patience is wearing thin.
We need to create an internal market worthy of the name also in services. The services sector constitutes a full 70% of all our economies and unfortunately it is still rife with barriers. Make no mistake, once we tackle these barriers, the vested interests will again make themselves known and call on Members of Parliament and ministers to defend the status quo. We shall need the Parliament’s strongest support to overcome that resistance to change.
Some erosion has also slipped into our framework for the free movement of goods. Mutual recognition, one of the bases of the internal market, is not working as well as it ought to. National marking often acts as a hidden barrier to trade. In some important industrial sectors, there are not nearly enough European standards. These weaknesses in the foundations of the internal market will be exposed even more strongly after enlargement.
We need an integrated capital market that is capable of channelling today’s savings into tomorrow’s investments. We need to strengthen corporate governance, taking due account of the ideas expressed in the recent Winter Report of high-level company law experts chaired by Professor Jaap Winter. We must offer our companies the flexibility to organise themselves on a continental scale, including through takeover bids. We need to remove tax obstacles, which add unnecessarily to the costs of doing business. We need to open up further the network industries. We need to deal with the pension time bomb. We need better and simpler rules."@en1
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