Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-318"
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"en.20040210.12.2-318"2
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"Mr President, in 1950 Robert Schuman launched the idea of a European Coal and Steel Community open to all States, thereby creating the basis for the complex and difficult journey of European unification, the most recent developments of which we are now experiencing. Even then the importance of steel in the European context was clear. I am not surprised therefore that the debate in this Parliament concerning the ‘Terni case’ has aroused so much interest and the opinions expressed have to a large extent not been dependent on political affiliations.
The European iron and steel sector is currently suffering as a result of the decision taken by the US to impose import duties on steel, principally from the European Union. The crisis in Italy is important because it involves other iron and steel centres, like the steel plant in Genoa-Cornigliano. In that context, the announcement by Thyssen Krupp, the owner of the Terni iron and steel plant, that it is going to invest in South Korea to produce steel in Asia is of major importance and is causing a good deal of concern.
As you know, the Terni plant was sold in 1994 as part of the process of privatisation promoted by the Institute for Reconstruction of Industry (IRI), subject to a guarantee that its activities would continue in Italy and that jobs would be protected. This is not a company in crisis but a company that produces a leading-edge product used to make thin metal sheets for electronic transformers. Furthermore, there are no other factories of this type in Italy. The technology used at Terni and the studies and research carried out in recent years are of an extremely high standard. Losing skills and know-how is exactly the opposite of the knowledge economy to which President Prodi recently referred in this Parliament. It is no coincidence that directors, managers, researchers and local politicians lined up alongside the workforce to fight on behalf of the product and the research associated with it. About 900 workers are likely to lose their jobs, not counting the knock-on effects.
We cannot, therefore, ignore the fact that the German multinational received funds and tax breaks from the European Union when it decided to acquire the Terni plant. I also wonder what the significance is, in global terms, of transferring production to Korea, what technological skills workers employed in South-East Asia have, what trade union rights they have and whether those rights will be observed.
At a meeting last December, some European Union industrial manufacturers in the footwear and textiles sector posed a number of questions concerning those matters to the delegation from China, which is preparing itself to become the factory of the world. The replies were extremely evasive and we had no grounds for thinking that elsewhere on the continent – with the exception of Japan – the situation was any better. Above all, in a market economy based on competition the rules must …"@en1
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