Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-120"
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"en.20040914.9.2-120"2
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".
Mr President, on the first question of whether this Commission should have left the issue for the next Commission, I wish to say that this whole issue goes back to 1998, when a directive was adopted on the protection of designs. At that time no agreement could be reached on the issue of spare parts for cars and the matter was put on hold. However, it was agreed that any change in legislation should go in the direction of liberalisation. That is what we have done today.
Secondly, in 2002 my colleague, Mr Monti, convinced the Commission and others of the need to liberalise the distribution of cars, which is called block exemption. This was done, and this proposal is the natural concomitant of his proposal, which was adopted in 2002. Therefore, it was of the essence that this Commission should deal with this issue because, as I have said, it goes with his proposal. I therefore insisted that this Commission should deal with it. Moreover, I think the Member who has just spoken would agree that it would not do for this Commission – even though it is within six weeks of the end of its term of office – to pass on difficult decisions to the next Commission. We are paid to take decisions – even though they may be difficult – and we should do that.
The second point refers to employment. At the moment car manufacturers obtain spare parts beyond and outside the European Union. They buy bonnets, headlamps and rear windows in countries like Turkey, Brazil and Korea. In other words, at the moment car manufacturers have exported jobs to those countries. If we open the market for repairs and the secondary market for spare parts, it is more than likely that the jobs created by small and medium-sized enterprises – which, we all agree, are very important for industry in general and in particular for German industry – will more than compensate for the loss of jobs as car manufacturers have been outsourcing their components – their spare parts – to suppliers beyond the confines of the European Union. Although it is difficult to point to hard facts, I am confident that the net result will be positive for employment, since I expect these small- and medium-sized enterprises to become very successful in the secondary market for spare parts."@en1
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