Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-292"
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"en.20030212.10.3-292"2
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". – Mr President, it gives me great pleasure to be able to present my report, even if for the second night running I find myself speaking in the last debate of the day. On behalf of all my colleagues on the committee, I hope that we can request the services to give the internal market a rather more prominent place in future.
As you said in your introduction, my report is about the Commission's strategy paper, Delivering the Promise. That will be very much the theme of my speech. But I want to say, for the record, that I have also been involved in considering a veritable cascade of other documents that the Commissioner sent us over the last few months. I have also considered the second Biennial Report on Mutual Recognition, the State of the Internal Market for Services and the Internal Market Scoreboard No 11, a very colourful document I am sure you have all read.
Before I move to the substance of the report, I should like to say that it is a privilege for me to have succeeded, as the committee's rapporteur on internal market strategy, my very good friend, Mrs Palacio, who was such a tremendous chairman of our committee and did so much to champion the cause of the internal market. She has now gone on to higher things as the Foreign Minister of Spain.
I have had the pleasure of working on this report by a happy coincidence during the time when the 10th anniversary of the internal market was marked. We were very pleased to welcome Commissioner Bolkestein and Mr Benson, the chairman of the Competitiveness Council, to Parliament back in November 2002. I would like to thank them both for enthusiastically promoting the cause of the internal market during that time. In his speech then Mr Bolkestein asked us to produce an ambitious and hard-hitting report. I think I have managed that, but I could not have done it without a lot of support from my colleagues. You will see tomorrow that I am confident this report will get the overwhelming support of the House. I particularly want to thank the shadow rapporteur, Mrs McCarthy, who made many valuable contributions, that we have included; my colleague and former President, Mr Gil-Robles Gil-Delgado, who has done the same; and thanks to the rapporteur for opinion Mr David Martin from the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. We have incorporated a number of his points. I hope he feels that we have done justice to his work as well.
I am slightly disappointed that the Liberal benches tonight are empty. I hope that their absence means that they are content with the work we have done. However, since they are of your political family, Commissioner, I hope you will draw that to their attention tomorrow.
I will highlight some of the points in this report. It is no coincidence that we have timed it now, in the run-up to the economic summit and following on the debate we had this morning. Our central recommendation - and Commissioner, we want you to take this forward from this House when you go to the summit so that the Council takes note of it - is that we want the completion of the internal market to be the top priority of the 2003 economic summit. We want the 'delivery gap' - a phrase that you appropriately used, Commissioner - to be closed. We want the new Competitiveness Council to address the issues seriously and make a difference. Naturally, we want the deficit revealed on your scoreboards in Member States' transposition to be closed. We also want to see quicker and more effective action taken where the Rules are being flouted. As part of the Better Regulation Initiative, we want to deal with the problems of over-complex, gold plating of internal market regulations. We also want internal market compatibility to be introduced as part of the assessment process.
We urge you to move forward quickly with the Internal Market for Services strategy. It is clear that will be a difficult measure, but it is a vital one. It will include important elements of mutual recognition, alongside harmonisation. We want the Member States to take a much more mature attitude to using mutual recognition alongside other weapons as a measure to create the single market. In our committee, we are absolutely dismayed that the sales promotion regulation, an ideal single market mutual recognition measure is still blocked in Council. We hope you will take that message back as well.
I want to conclude with two important points. First, we hope that you, Commissioner, will join us and the single market in organising another Single Market Forum before the end of 2003 where we can celebrate the entry of ten new countries to the internal market. That is something in which we want to involve consumers, businesses, Member governments and Commissioners in the quest to make the internal market work better.
Finally, we hope that you can get, with the support of the Council, a firm declaration of support for the completion of the single market on its tenth anniversary. We have been ambitious and hard hitting. We invite the Council to take the same approach."@en1
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