Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20030212.3.3-014"2
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"Mr President, we are a long way off from fulfilling the euphoric proclamations of the Lisbon Summit of March 2000 on full employment and on making the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. The slowdown in economic growth, the relocation and closure of companies accompanied by further redundancies, higher employment and increased social difficulties demonstrate the danger of the approach that has been pursued. This approach involves speeding up liberalisation and privatisation, the insistence on the primacy of monetary policies and of competition, the deregulation of the labour market and of labour legislation and making these more flexible. These factors clearly demonstrate the need for a sea-change in the neo-liberal guidelines and policies currently practised, which will not happen as a result of the proposals that have been presented to us.
The Commission acknowledges, however, that the lack of up-to-date data still hampers the detailed study of what is happening in the field of poverty and social exclusion. Furthermore, little progress has been made in preventing early school leaving and in reducing gender inequality and the guidelines that have been presented, specifically in the field of social security, structural reforms of the labour market of work based on making work more flexible and more precarious and on wage moderation, and for pursuing the process of liberalisation in an increasing number of sectors, tend to aggravate the current situation.
By accentuating the unilateral approach to the liberalisation and greater flexibility of the goods, services, capital and labour force markets, ignoring economic and social cohesion, the Commission and the Council are contributing to increasingly significant social problems and to hampering economic recovery. Consequently, as we highlighted in the resolution tabled by my group, it is crucial that the objectives of full employment, the harmonisation of social conditions in order to achieve progress, economic and social cohesion and development are defined as priorities for the Spring Summit. Social and employment policies cannot remain subordinated to strict compliance with the criteria of nominal convergence and make it urgent to redefine the mandate and powers of the European Central Bank. Sustainable development with a view to achieving social and ecological conversion must be founded on a thorough overhaul of the irrational criteria of the stability pact, given the diversity of the economic and social situation of the various countries. It also requires a more equitable distribution of wealth, an overhaul of social protection systems in a way that demonstrates solidarity, and requires public and social investment, particularly in education, research and in the knowledge-based economy.
Consequently, as demanded by workers and citizens almost everywhere, including in Portugal last weekend, for example, at the impressive demonstration in Lisbon, it is time to heed the calls of the citizens and the workers."@en1
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