Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-13-Speech-2-037"
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"en.20040113.2.2-037"2
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"Mr President, on behalf of the Commission, I have listened attentively to all the speakers. The diversity, to say the least, of the views they expressed did not surprise me, and I should not have intervened had I not perceived in Mr Langen’s contribution a somewhat critical attitude to the Commission on this issue, a suggestion that the Commission raised many questions but did not provide clear answers or, to be more precise, that it was slow in delivering clear legal responses. This is therefore the point that I should like to take a few moments to clear up between us.
If the Commission had been able to propose a clear legal response to you today, this would mean that a solution had been found to the problem we have been debating. In point of fact, the very purpose of the Green Paper we published last year was to open the broadest possible debate on a highly complex issue, and our feeling in the Commission is that a year is not an unduly long time for a debate with civil society, with you and with a number of representatives of economic and territorial interests.
The problem is indeed a difficult one, as our debate has shown. In political terms, this issue palpably centres on a specific European policy mix for which we all want to suggest a slightly different recipe, depending on whether our political preference is for the market economy, which we recognise for its competitiveness and efficiency, or for collectivist virtues in the domain of social or territorial cohesion. These are all dimensions of solidarity, but each of us has his or her own idea of the proportions in which the ingredients should be mixed.
In political terms, then, the problem is relatively clear, and I do not really distinguish any great differences between the various ways in which you have described the contours you would give these services of general interest, or public services, if they had to be more precisely defined at the European level.
The difficulty plainly relates to the way in which they should be defined. This remains an unresolved issue at the present juncture. Would what we are doing just now, with our sectoral directives and our decisions taken on a somewhat
basis on state aid, suffice as a legal framework? This is surely the question that is being asked. As you have pointed out, the Convention debated this point and concluded that it might be necessary to have a European law to provide the legal basis that is currently under discussion today in the context of the EC Treaty in its present form. This is certainly the question we must clarify.
As I said in my introductory remarks, the Commission is examining various options. To reassure Mr Langen, I repeat that, particularly in the light of the debate which will culminate in tomorrow’s vote on a resolution, the Commission will communicate its own positions before the end of this legislative term. Whether we come out in favour of an instrument which involves the European Parliament in codecision or whether our conclusions favour a different approach, I must stress on behalf of the Commission that all our options are still open at this stage."@en1
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