Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-21-Speech-4-028"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20021121.2.4-028"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, I would like to thank all my colleagues who have supported me and in particular those who share the view of this report, which I believe to be balanced and concerned with real situations. I note that the amendments tabled by Mr Evans and Mrs Riis-Jørgensen ruin that balance and in fact condemn any state aid in market activities. I therefore hope that these amendments will not be retained and that the balance achieved in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs will be preserved in plenary. I worked together with the Directorate General for Competition, which very carefully manages state aid policy, and I am very pleased with how the dialogue progressed.
Like any competition policy, the policy on state aid is facing new challenges. Its prime objective remains to reduce all aid that distorts or could distort competition, but other objectives should also be taken into consideration: competitiveness and growth – the Lisbon objectives – and social cohesion, which involves support for struggling regions to catch up and develop. This is why the Stockholm and Lisbon European Councils made the commitment not to reduce all aid, but aid in the sense of Article 87, in other words aid that creates unfair competition. They particularly advocate redeploying aid towards the horizontal objectives. All of these Council decisions must be implemented firmly, but with discernment.
I stress in my report that the effectiveness of horizontal aid must be evaluated. For example, the legitimacy of aid for research, the environment, training and employment is clear, and increases in this aid are often desired. However, it is not always effective in terms of the Lisbon and Gothenburg objectives, and we should therefore move forward with our recommendations.
It would be dangerous to ban any notion of sectoral aid, however. This aid could prove to be essential for strategic projects on which Europe is falling behind and the market is declining, but also for dealing with unfair competition on the global market, or to save production operations that are faced with very serious economic shocks. We are aware that the Commission has also itself opened the debate on the interaction of competition and industrial policy. The enlargement of the Union to the Central and Eastern European countries also poses difficult problems which must be dealt with fairly. If the private sector will not fund the modernisation of the steel industry in Poland and the Czech Republic, in a global context of excess capacity, should we nevertheless ask those countries to give up developing that sector? A re-examination of steel aid is essential. In the same way, while it is legitimate to aim to eliminate special tax arrangements and convert them into regional aid, it should not be forgotten that countries such as Ireland benefited a great deal from them until recently and that as the economic level of the Eastern regions concerned is particularly low, it will not be possible to create viable companies straight away.
Regarding services of general interest, a perspective of progress is emerging. The Council and the Commission are re-assessing their interest for the Community. In accordance with the wishes of Parliament, the Court of Justice recognises that financial compensation, in return for the obligations imposed, is not aid. We therefore want the Commission to speed up its discussions on this basis and to propose new tools soon in order to ensure free choice, resources for services of general interest, and competition, as well as to safeguard non profit-making activities.
Finally, we ask it to speed up the work on considering tax systems, described by the Primarolo group as encouraging unfair competition, in terms of state aid that should be eliminated.
Ladies and gentlemen, the scoreboard is a step forward in achieving transparency and in the public debate, and we welcome this. However, the Commission is aware of the limits that we have highlighted. The comparability of data between Member States is not guaranteed, the effectiveness of aid has not been evaluated and a comparison between the Union and its major world competitors has not yet been provided. These are also areas to work on in the future, and in view of which, it would be desirable to increase the involvement of civil society.
Allow me to add a few words on competition policy as a whole. Competition is essential for the viability and efficiency of the internal market. However, the European Union has a great deal of progress to make in terms of industrial and technological development. We should not move backwards in terms of competition policy, but we need to bring industrial and competition policies to the same level in the treaties and in practice, otherwise the Union will fall behind in terms of innovation, scale effects, networks and creation of companies. Experts already believe that its potential for growth in terms of production and productivity has slowed down, while we wish to speed it up. The process of mergers is only one aspect of the problem. We are aware that the general centralisation of powers within the DG poses a problem, but we do not want to swing towards the American model. In the reform under preparation, we would prefer a much more open, deliberative instruction procedure, which allows for reasonable timescales, while the decision would still be the responsibility of the Commission."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples