Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-09-Speech-1-073"
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"en.20040209.5.1-073"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to address a number of remarks by previous speakers relating to firms’ need for leeway and room to manoeuvre, and to their productivity. What we are talking about here is not rules on 35-hour or 38-hour weeks, but the option that exists in certain Member States of a week of 55 or more hours. I have to say that I regard this opting-out arrangement as absolutely absurd. Figures like that belong in the nineteenth century; I am convinced that the productivity of our businesses is not dependent on them and that they will not make us the most modern and the most efficient economic region in Europe. What matters most of all to businesses is the options available for machinery’s runtimes and operating times, rather than any unnecessary extension of working time. Businesses care about modern forms of labour organisation. In fact, Germany is a good example of how the social partners can be involved in the shared development of modern types of employment, organisation of work and working times.
I might add that it is this that has enabled us to lead the world in the export field.
Let it also be said that the figures, data and times currently under discussion do not seem to take account of the possibility of workers having such things as children and families. Who, after all, is capable of being away from home for 48, 55 or more hours in a week? I might remind you that the Working Times Directive was meant, as one of its objectives, to be an instrument for reconciling work and family life.
Mr Pronk said something very good about the opt-out, namely that it has actually failed. Had it been a derogation with a limited lifespan, nothing could have been said against it. Now, though, in the meantime, there are several countries that want to adopt this British model, and it is unfortunate that these include Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and most of the accession countries that will be joining us on 1 May.
I doubt that the Commissioner will often have come across so much public approval as there has been as a result of the rulings of the European Court of Justice in connection with hospital doctors. It is, for this reason, vital that we counteract every tendency to hand these things back to the national level. It is in this area that European social policy is under scrutiny, as are guaranteed European standards, for if we make it possible for these matters to be handed back to the national level, you can be sure that the same thing will happen in many other cases in the life of the next Parliament.
In order to nip that sort of thing in the bud, we want the precise legal framework, which you have promised us. We are happy to go along with that, but let there be no turning back!"@en1
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