Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-01-26-Speech-3-054"
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"en.20050126.6.3-054"2
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"Mr President, I believe, Mr President of the Commission, and we have already witnessed this, that you have great political ability. You have created and continue to create a certain amount of unanimity around yourself and your intentions. Having said that, I would like to strike a more downbeat note.
Listening to you, we should be channelling our efforts into turning Europe into the most competitive economy and from the competitiveness thus achieved there would be a flood of jobs that would benefit everyone. Mr President, I do not share that view and there are a number of us who do not share that view. This is because your programme does not provide the right responses to the problems encountered by Europe and its citizens.
It is true that, at the moment, economic growth is too weak and must be stepped up. How should this be done, though, and for whom? The by-products of growth should help to improve our citizens’ lives, should be shared by everyone, and should favour the less-privileged members of society. Apart from the lack of jobs, our citizens are suffering from insecurity of employment. Our healthcare, social security and retirement systems are under threat. With the advent of globalisation, more and more people are feeling insecure about their lives. Now more than ever the Union needs a strong political plan, but in order to achieve the Europe that we want, we need that strong political plan to come from a social perspective, a plan for society that enables every individual to lead a fulfilling life, a plan based on solidarity.
If we want our children to continue to enjoy a high standard of education that is accessible to all, if we want public services to continue to strengthen social cohesion, if we want jobs to enable each individual to lead a decent, fulfilling life and if we want older people to have a proper retirement, we must do much more than stake our entire future on the uncertain rewards of a policy of competitiveness at all costs.
Mr President, in your programme, you could, in my opinion, have placed greater emphasis on strengthening the EU’s social dimension, because it is precisely policies of this nature that are at the forefront of the citizens’ concerns, and I feel that you have not done this. Far from it, in fact; it strikes me that when our social protection systems and our public services come under attack, it is the citizens of Europe who stand to suffer from the proposals that you are tabling. In this respect, Mr President, I should like to ask you to make the right decision and withdraw Mr Bolkestein’s draft directive, which in its current form would not be acceptable to us.
To have the most competitive and the most dynamic policies in the world..."@en1
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