Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-26-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20030326.5.3-045"2
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"Mr President, the Spring Summit was held under very difficult circumstances. I will not mention the situation in Iraq because my group chairman has already done so and my fellow countryman and colleague Arie Oostlander will be doing so. I will therefore concentrate on the socio-economic aspect.
It is clear that the uncertainty about the consequences of the war and its duration will have and is having an impact on the world economy. I think, however, that we must also realise that the growth in unemployment in Europe naturally started long before that. One of the reasons for this is, of course, the lack of structural reforms in the European economy and the fact that necessary measures have been postponed for too long.
In this regard I was nevertheless enormously shocked when I saw the scoreboard which the European Commission – and bravo for doing so – has for the first time added to the documents that contained an evaluation relating to Lisbon. If you allow that to sink in, you realise that there is an enormous gap between the words and decisions being taken on the one hand and their implementation on the other.
I think that the Spring Summit should have given at least as much priority to restoring confidence in the European economy, in terms of what is agreed at policy level. I must say that the Spring Summit delivered more than I had anticipated. So in this spirit, I would like to congratulate the Greek Presidency.
What really matters now, however, is its implementation, and that is why my group – and I am pleased to see that this has also been adopted by other groups – has proposed compiling a roadmap in which the European Commission sets out in more detail what steps need to be taken in order to achieve the Lisbon targets by 2010. I therefore hope that the Commission – and I am also looking at the President, Mr Prodi – will be able to produce such a roadmap by October 2003, so that we can get a more accurate idea of what must happen in the future. That is all the more necessary on account of our impending enlargement and because the Lisbon targets will, of course, soon have to be achieved in a much bigger European Union, and I think that it would be useful to keep an eye on that.
We acknowledge that small and medium-sized enterprises have a significant role to play in the area of employment. We now need to actually implement the charter we established for SMEs, for example, but also the action plan for the simplification of regulation. We have been talking about the need to make it easier for SMEs to access investment capital for so long now. Why do we not do it, why can we not just get rid of these obstructions?
We have formulated a fine target of 3% of the GNP for research and development, public and private, by 2010, and rightly so, but we need to finalise this too, as some Member States will already be above 4-5% by then and others will still be a long way off. How are we going to close this gap, and what efforts will have to be made by the various Member States? We are in favour of the open coordination method, but that is not enough, and the European Parliament and the national parliaments will also have to be involved in this.
If I may be permitted to summarise, I would like to say that we are on the right track, but it would in particular be to the Commission’s credit if we could convert our good intentions into
in order to create concrete handholds that enable us to evaluate where we stand and evaluate our progress together every year and in order to prevent the Member States from hiding behind fine words. It is now time for deeds."@en1
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"roadmaps"1
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