Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-016"
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"en.20030212.3.3-016"2
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"Mr President, I welcome the positive and pragmatic contributions made this morning by the Greek Presidency and by the Commission President, Mr Prodi. I welcome the fact that every spring EU leaders meet to review what is known as the Lisbon Process, which is designed to ensure that the European Union becomes the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. Over the coming weeks, there will be many ministerial meetings to put in place serious preparatory work before EU leaders meet on 21 March 2003.
The European Union has a lot of work to do, as recent data presently points towards slow economic development within the Union. Growth rates for the last quarter of 2002 range between 0.1% and 0.4% of GDP growth within the European Union. Unemployment within the Union stands at 8.5%. I welcome the fact that the Greek Presidency is focusing on the need to create more and better jobs within the European Union. It is clear that the spring European Council meeting will put labour market reforms at the top of its agenda. We must all be conscious of the need to improve the workings of the European employment strategy.
The Greek Government is right to guarantee that the social partners in Europe will be involved intrinsically in the process of labour market reform. I have always supported social partnership, which is based on the sensible principle of involving trade union and employer groups in key economic and social reform policy issues.
The Greek Presidency is working towards the implementation of the Green Paper on entrepreneurship. This will focus on eliminating red tape which hampers the day-to-day activities of the 19 million small and medium-sized companies in Europe. It will also entail enactment of the European Charter for small enterprises.
We must improve access for small companies to know-how and to finance, and we must simplify our regulatory environment. If the European Union is to become the leading knowledge-based economy in the world, then we must take full advantage of all new information technologies. We must guarantee universal access to new telecom services for all the citizens of the Union and we must put in place adequate training and educational programmes for all users.
The implementation of the EU initiative and the adoption of a Community-wide patent system are certainly concrete measures that must be supported. The Greek Government is rightly pushing all the Member States to put in place innovative structures which will fully guarantee the payment of future pension policies. Fortunately, as a society, we are living longer and that is why our governments must plan for the demographic changes for the future."@en1
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