Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-06-03-Speech-2-020"
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"en.20030603.1.2-020"2
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"Mr President, may I start by congratulating the Commission on the opening words, with which I very much agree. The points about the better balance between flexibility and security and the importance of entrepreneurship are very important themes in this debate and I will refer to those in my concluding remarks.
I will start by sharing a very short story about the UK, which also has relevance for this morning. In my previous life in the manufacturing business, I remember vividly a certain major retailer that was losing market share and was starting to fall out with its advertising agency in this regard. The advertising agency had a very simple message 'You are not spending enough money on advertising'; the message was fine, so they increased the amount of money spent on advertising. The company continued to lose market share and the advertising agency said: 'you are still not spending enough money'. Finally the company saw the light and fired the advertising agency.
The moral of that story is that sometimes when you have a problem you do not need more and more of the same solution, you need very different solutions. That is a problem that we are facing within the EU and within Parliament at the moment. We have enough employment guidelines, the Commission's report was mildly helpful but the Member States already know exactly what they have to do. What they lack is the political will to do it. I do not believe it will help very much if we contribute to making those guidelines more detailed and more prescriptive. I agree with some of the comments of the rapporteur, and I very genuinely commend him for the hard work that he has put in, the thought that he has put in, and indeed the short timeframe in which he has done it. I agree particularly on the points he makes about tax, that it is very much a national issue and long may that so remain. However, some of the more prescriptive conclusions that he comes to and certainly the idea that, and I quote, 'there should be more comprehensive involvement of social partners that represent neither the majority of employers nor employees', do not seem to me to be a helpful step, I see them rather as a retrograde step.
Finally, on the issue of flexibility, security and entrepreneurship, I note that the Commissioner is not here today because quite rightly she is at this other very important meeting, the Employment Council. I hope at that meeting, where amongst other issues they will be talking about the Atypical Workers Directive, the Commission will take the opportunity to show that it wants to promote a different message and not the same old messages that have been promoted in the past and that it too believes in entrepreneurship and flexibility and does not wish to remain mired in the past.
Today is a very important day, and I look forward to that meeting going the way I hope it will. I am sorry to say to the rapporteur that much as I support some of the thinking behind what he is saying we cannot support his overall report today."@en1
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