Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-122"
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"en.20030311.6.2-122"2
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"Madam President, when Mr Mann’s report was discussed by the committee, many amendments were subject to major debate. There was disagreement over one area in particular, namely the conditions under which small businesses operate, together with their role in employment policy. Two different approaches were thus pitted against each other. Advocates of the one view wanted to make life easier for small businesses by means of tax relief, lower wage costs, less red tape, what are known as mini-jobs and such services as cannot be provided without government aid and public subsidies, for example household services.
The other approach was quite different. The representatives of this approach wanted to put their faith in small businesses with good business ideas, skilled management, possibilities of growth and ambitions to grow and to employ more people. We are concerned, then, with small businesses that are also strong or are able to become so and that can manage to pay good wages and ordinary taxes, provide their employees with good working conditions and maintain good union relations.
What we have here, then, are two different approaches, but not varieties of right- or left-wing policies, for I know that many people in industry prefer good, strong small businesses and that it is precisely to these businesses that they wish to provide capital, opportunities for growth and support in terms of knowledge. It is also precisely this route that my group too wishes to go down.
In actual fact, we of course have too many small businesses in Europe. By far the largest number of small businesses is to be found in those countries and regions which are weakest economically and in which unemployment is very high. We have a large number of businesses that can scarcely support one family. We have a large number of businesses that start up with the aid of state subsidies and that immediately disappear once the periods of subsidy have come to an end. In brief, we have a situation in which statistics show that, of ten new businesses, there is perhaps only one, or possibly two, that will survive the first three or four years.
We must put our faith in quality. We could unite all the political groups in this Parliament around a progressive policy in this area, a policy that would take our overarching objectives and the Lisbon strategy’s objectives seriously, that is to say ‘good jobs for all’. Such a policy would require that, in small businesses too, the jobs should be of good quality and be the source of sufficiently high productivity to provide a social surplus.
Mr Mann’s report contains a number of constructive proposals for a modern and forward-looking policy of this kind towards small businesses. I hope that those amendments that point in the opposite direction will be rejected and that Parliament will send the Commission and the Council a clear signal to the effect that we want to see small, and not so small, businesses that are of good quality and in line with the Lisbon strategy."@en1
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