Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-13-Speech-2-018"
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"en.20040113.2.2-018"2
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"Mr President, in spite of the power of work that Mr Herzog has put into this report, I have to say from the outset how far the report, as adopted by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, has fallen short of our hopes and expectations for a vigorous European instrument on services of general interest. My group cannot accept it.
The text has become an ode to liberalisation with one single aim in mind, namely to make competitive market forces the sole regulator of service provision. Recital H, for example, emphasises that liberalisation in leading sectors in the internal market is a factor in technological progress and economic efficiency, while paragraph 13 welcomes the liberalisation that has taken place in the fields of telecommunications, postal services, transport and energy.
Even the moderate proposal calling on the Commission to perform without delay a precise and comparative evaluation of the real impact of the policy of liberalisation of services of general interest before embarking upon further liberalisation, a proposal contained in the Langen report which was approved by this very House, is not endorsed in this report.
On spurious pretexts, the report also discards the aim of a framework directive in which services of general interest and the obligations they entail for governments as well as for public and private operators could be defined more precisely. Only basic education and social protection would remain in the public sector. This is far removed from the sort of approach that is absolutely essential for the protection of people’s fundamental rights to energy and water supplies, transport, housing, communications and information.
The purpose of services of general interest should be to guarantee these rights in accordance with a number of principles, namely equal access for everyone, information, consultation, user and worker participation and financial viability. It is impossible to achieve this ambition by relentlessly continuing to pursue the sole aim of liberalisation.
This text is unacceptable as it now stands. The hopes and expectations aroused by the Green Paper were that public services would play a pivotal role in guaranteeing economic, social and environmental rights, that the true ambition of Europe was to satisfy the needs of the greatest number in a society characterised by solidarity.
It follows from these remarks that my group will support all the amendments that are designed to remove the constantly recurring references to liberalisation and those which strengthen a model of services of general interest that are worthy of the name. My group reaffirms the need for an evaluation. It emphasises that services of general interest are elementary public services. It also expresses its desire to confirm unambiguously the right of local and regional authorities to choose freely the way they administer the services of general interest for which they are responsible. These things, at the very least, must be guaranteed if the services of general interest are to be an engine of solidarity in Europe."@en1
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