Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-26-Speech-3-020"
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"en.20050126.6.3-020"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, it has taken the EU a long time to acknowledge that the Lisbon Strategy has failed to meet the objectives set in 2000. I had the opportunity to mention in this very House a Commission report from last January, which pointed out that, on the road to full employment, during the year just finished, for the first time in ten years, we actually shed more jobs than we created. As for building a knowledge-based economy, the same report noted that there had in fact been an ‘overall decline’ in public and private investment in the fields that are key to the future, namely training, education and research. The report also said that more than one 15 year-old in six did not have, and I quote, ‘the minimum skills required, of reading, writing and arithmetic’. This was a shocking, but telling, detail.
Accordingly, the remedies announced since then, to go faster and further down the neoliberal road, strike us as deeply flawed and extremely dangerous. The key word here is competitiveness. What concept of competitiveness are we talking about? The one prevailing in the Union is based on cutting wages, making labour markets less secure and extending working lives. It generates competition in the social, tax and salary areas between the 25 Member States. It sees the democratic elements of the work code as an obstacle. It drives down public spending and places restrictive limits on the framework of services of general economic interest. Even health and environmental requirements – as has just been said – run the risk of being revised downwards in the name of competitiveness, as in the case of the REACH programme. Cultural exception in the rules of competitiveness is put in jeopardy for the same reason. This is undoubtedly what Mr Barroso was thinking about when he mentioned the ‘friendly business environment’ in the report that he gave us
I am convinced that this neoliberal mindset, this culture of the lowest bidder, runs counter to the stated objectives of the Lisbon Agenda.
It thwarts those objectives, first of all, because budgetary and salary austerity contributes towards stagnation in consumption – that crucial engine of growth – and works against jobs; secondly, because this restrictive policy inevitably leads to additional expenditure for men and women, beginning with training, a need that is increasingly crucial; and thirdly because this obsession with the market and the unbridled monetarisation of the economy and of competition, is destroying people’s motivation, creativity and confidence in the future, which is an essential, not to say indispensable, resource in the smooth running of the economy and society. Mr Barroso, you said, yourself, in your communication, that a significant proportion of European public opinion remains to be convinced that Europe is on the right track; that, I believe, is an understatement.
What can be done about this? Among the immediate measures to be taken, as far as we are concerned, is to exclude spending on research, education and health expenditure, spending on certain infrastructures and job-related spending from the assessment of public-sector deficits that are to be brought under control. We must also bring in democratic monitoring of all public funding awarded to companies to check its effectiveness from the point of view of employment, and if that system is shown to be ineffective, money must be paid back.
Furthermore, as Parliament has specifically requested, we feel that an assessment must be made of the effects of liberalisation, such as that of the railways, before moving on to the next stage, and we naturally reiterate our request that the Bolkestein directive be withdrawn. On the subject of that directive, Mr President, I see that it is no longer mentioned in the Commission’s text, unless I am mistaken. I should like to believe that this implies that you have accepted the request for it to be withdrawn, though what we would really like, in view of what is at stake, is for the President of the Commission to confirm this change himself.
In short, structural changes must, in our view, be put in place that ultimately lead to shared control of the markets and, accordingly, to a return to the primacy of political choice, such as the choice to prioritise job security or training for every individual preparing for a job. To do this, we also need resources, which raises the question of the remit and the status of the European Central Bank.
Mr President, Mr Barroso has just highlighted the need to be tuned into the citizens’ concerns. I feel that many of the concerns that I have mentioned are shared far beyond the circles close to my group. The Commission would be well advised not to ignore them."@en1
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