Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-10-Speech-1-096"
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"en.20050110.14.1-096"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, the proposal for a regulation on sales promotions has, since the start of the debate process, been through many misadventures, since it has been rejected no less than four times by the Council in three years.
This is hardly a surprise, however. How can these persistent blockings be a cause for surprise when no one any longer clearly understands what options are embraced by the Commission when it comes to European consumer rights, in spite of the adoption, almost two years ago in March 2003, of the Green Paper on Consumer Protection.
Does the ambition still exist to have, in time, a harmonised consumer law, as promoted, it seems, by the Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices, or has harmonisation of any kind simply been given up on, as appears to be indicated by the draft Directive on Services in the Internal Market?
To this vagueness about strategy is added, if I may say so, a certain confusion about concepts and, in particular, about key concepts such as the internal market clause, mutual recognition or the celebrated country of origin principle, to which the draft documents alternately make reference, without its being particularly clear why, and in which cases, one principle has been chosen over another and what the advantages of that choice will be for both companies and consumers.
It is therefore perfectly understandable why States with particularly protective legislation for consumers hesitate to give up what they have already in favour of some uncertain alternative and to subscribe without reservations to a system that, whatever the terms in which it is labelled – mutual recognition or country of origin principle – cannot fail to end up in legal dumping, that is to say a situation in which the least specific national legislations progressively become the models for other legislations.
As long as no clear answers are given to these prior questions and as long as no work has been done to make these various current documents consistent, I do not therefore, for my part, see the urgency of obtaining a political agreement on this proposal for a regulation. To put it crudely, it is urgent that we wait.
Finally, there is also disagreement about the legal instrument, as you have just emphasised, Commissioner. This is not a simple point of procedure, since the choice of the regulation, rather than the directive, remains, for me, questionable in an area in which, in view of extremely strong cultural sensibilities such as have been seen on the issue of reduced-price sales, margins of flexibility should be given to the Member States.
Finally, let us be serious. Let us stop invoking at every opportunity the need to re-launch the Lisbon Strategy and stop pretending to believe that the creation of millions of jobs in Europe is dependent upon the regulations governing games, promotional contests and other discount promotions. The Lisbon Strategy is worth more than that. Let the three pillars of competitiveness and, in addition, social development and environmental protection be acknowledged as being of equal value."@en1
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