Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-09-Speech-4-049"
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"en.20050609.7.4-049"2
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".
I would like to give my opinion on the work of our colleague, Mr Őry. I welcome the fact that this is the first such report to be drafted by a Member from a new Member State. Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing crises everywhere we turn in today’s European Union. The smaller countries adhere to the Stability Pact, while the larger ones adhere to other principles. All this affects the new Member States, which are still being called on to comply fully with a raft of often nonsensical measures, as the previous speaker rightly emphasised.
Social problems principally affect poor regions, regardless of whether these are located in old or new Member States. Disabled people currently account for 10% of the population, yet only a few countries can be said to have legislation in place that makes at least partial improvements to the everyday situation of these people, including at work. Problems are faced by national minorities, school-leavers, women and the over-fifties. People from socially-disadvantaged backgrounds represent a major problem, and refugees are starting to become one.
What is the main problem faced by the European Union as a whole? The problem is a system that strives to leave everything to the invisible hands of the market. I should like to cite just three examples by way of illustration. The privatisation of drinking water sources and sewage systems has increased the price of a cubic metre of water more than a thousand-fold. My second example, the enormous pressure to liberalise the rental market, means that 50-70% of pensioners’ incomes in the new European Union countries is now spent on accommodation. And what about tomorrow? Few flats are being built, the mobile labour force often lives in critical conditions, and the situation for unemployed people, young families, disabled persons and pensioners is becoming critical. A third example is disabled people, who form an ever-greater proportion of the unemployed. In the Czech Republic, in northern Bohemia, say, the rate of unemployment among disabled people has risen from 8% 10 years ago to over 12%, despite the measures that have been taken. This is a stark warning.
People are being asked to join a society where public services have been shut down, public transport is expensive in spite of ever more threadbare networks, crèches are being abolished and the number of nursery schools reduced, after-school activities are being done away with or scaled down, which often involves high financial demands on parents, and the status of trade unions is worsening, as a result of attempts to abolish the labour code. All these are manifestations of extreme liberal tendencies.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you think that our citizens are blind to the extreme liberal language of the Constitutional Treaty? Do you know nothing of the topics discussed in the debate held prior to the referenda in France and Holland? Do you want statistical shortcomings to increase pressure on the new Member States, which are being forced into the ruthless privatisation of all state property? Do you not know that the new Member States are becoming an experimental terrain for the original 15 Member States, in order to test how much more people can take? Am I right, ladies and gentlemen, or is the ‘social state’ dead and we are heading in a completely different direction?
It is to be welcomed that we have before us a draft report on social inclusion. The fundamental questions are covered in it, as well as being scattered between the lines, even though our future direction, including basic social standards, is still missing. This is a step in the right direction, but a small and timid one."@en1
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