Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-07-Speech-4-148"
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"en.20050707.25.4-148"2
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"Mr President, allow me first of all, because we are resuming this debate in very distressing conditions, to offer my sincere condolences to the families of the victims of the attacks that have taken place in London, the terrible consequences of which we are learning minute by minute.
To return to our debate, the major importance of which was stated this morning, my group, through Caroline Lucas’s speech, has stressed the extent to which it supports the series of temporary measures that are being proposed. That said, I should like today to highlight certain points that appear to me to be essential. The first concerns two paragraphs in the report that seek to minimise the scope of the REACH Directive, and which we consider to be totally unacceptable. Those two paragraphs actually make a very clear recommendation to limit the scope of application of the directive in order to prevent its having – supposedly – harmful consequences for the textile industry and its competitiveness. I would remind you that the draft REACH Directive, currently being debated in Parliament, proposes to record, assess and monitor the use of chemical substances that could be harmful to our health and our environment.
These references are therefore completely unacceptable, because we do not believe that the competitiveness of our industry can be increased at the expense of health, the environment and employees’ working conditions. It is all the more unacceptable given that in my region, for instance, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, which is hard hit by the restructuring, we are unfortunately well versed in this type of debate, which advocates curbing environmental demands in order, so they say, to protect jobs. That systematically results in a social and environmental disaster. I am referring, of course, to the very high number of asbestos victims. I am also thinking of the Metaleurop affair, which was the subject of a major debate in this House, and which caused the inhabitants of the region to lose their jobs, their health and their soil, unusable for years.
This attack against the REACH Directive is therefore entirely misplaced, all the more so since it is expected that its effect on the textile and chemical industry in general will be to foster and drive the capacity for innovation. Our discussion ought to be much more focused on the competitive advantage resulting from the low cost of producing textiles products in China. In fact we should be aware that these low production costs are due to the exploitation of Chinese workers and to the violent suppression of their demands.
Allow me to refer to an extract from an Amnesty International report, a relatively recent one since it dates from 2002, which states very clearly that in private companies in China overtime is not only compulsory, but is also unpaid, and that certain factories impose fines on those refusing to work overtime or arriving late for work. Chinese workers work between 10 and 12 hours per day and their accommodation and food costs are often deducted directly from their wages. It is not unusual for businesses to withhold wages for sometimes two months, or to keep the identity cards of certain workers for several months. In short, trade unions are hugely repressed.
Since we have a structured dialogue with China on human rights – talks moreover took place last week – it seems to me that we ought to highlight the freedom of trade unions. The numerous trade unionists today incarcerated in Chinese prisons ought to be the subject of protection measures, protection measures provided for in the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders. This is an entirely crucial factor in the debate, which, I believe, has been unjustly concealed."@en1
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