Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-16-Speech-3-138"
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Mr President, it is a very great honour to address this Parliament again – a very high-quality group of parliamentarians are here I know. In all parliaments sometimes you speak to a very large number and sometimes you do not. I take this as full support for all the policies which have been followed both by the UK Presidency and by the United Kingdom on aspects like the budget, which I shall come to in a moment.
Fifth is the European Union’s work on global security. On data retention this Parliament has an opportunity to join in the EU’s collective responsibility to shape legislation that will increase the security of our citizens and bring criminals to justice. There is a counter-terrorism strategy that will indicate how we deal with radicalisation, how we protect our infrastructure and how we ensure better exchange of information. We also have to combat illegal immigration and strengthen our borders, whilst ensuring that we harness the benefits of legal migration for the EU and for developing countries.
Finally, the summit agreed that Javier Solana, working with the Presidency, should take forward work on common foreign and security policy aspects of defence and security. There are specific proposals for research and training in this area to fill gaps in our capability. We also have to improve crisis management structures to respond to disasters and look to increase funding for CFSP. In December, by the way, we will be publishing a comprehensive strategy for Africa.
In all areas there will be interim reports to the December European Council and final reports during the Austrian Presidency in the first half of next year. I am confident that in drawing up these reports the Commission will give full consideration to the views of the relevant Parliamentary committees. This, in some detail, is what was discussed at Hampton Court.
However, now that we have broad agreement on the direction of a modern Europe, we have to get the right budget deal to deliver these economic and social priorities. The Presidency is committed to working for a budget deal in December. But we all know that it is going to be extremely difficult to reach one. In June, five Member States rejected the proposed budget; next month we will need all 25 to agree. So we have some hard negotiating ahead of us. With that in mind, we aim to table comprehensive proposals in early December for discussion at a conclave of foreign ministers.
Changes will be needed in three main areas. First, we have to chart a new direction for the European Union budget to ensure that it can respond to the challenges of the 21st century. That requires establishing a clear timetable for a review covering all aspects of revenue and expenditure, a hard look at where the money comes from, how it is used and how we account for it. Failure to sign off the European Union’s accounts for the eleventh successive year – which is very poor – affects the climate of debate and of opinion about the whole of the European Union in every single Member State. So this new direction requires the laying-down of clear objectives for future Union spending, for the accounting for that spending, without which there will not be taxpayer confidence in what this Union is doing, and setting clear pathways for the future reform of the Union’s policies.
Second, we have to amend the structure of spending from 1 January 2007 from that which was proposed in the last negotiating box in June, notably to take account of recent discussions by Member States of the proposals by Commission President Barroso, which he made on 20 October.
Third, the consequences of any proposed changes to the own-resources decision – in other words to the amount which is paid by Member States to the EU’s budget – must be seen to be fair and balanced in all Member States. For that to happen, significant changes will be needed to the arrangements affecting the United Kingdom – amongst other Member States – from those that were proposed in June. I do not want anybody to be taken by surprise: when I talk about significant changes, I mean significant changes. Without significant changes, I see little prospect of a deal. However, with them, I believe that we can take negotiations forward and we are committed, as the Presidency, to trying to do a deal and we will make every effort to get there.
So far, I have talked about Europe’s response to the challenges of globalisation mainly in terms of what we will do – what policies we adopt and what budget we should agree. However, globalisation also poses a challenge to Europe in terms not just of what we do but how we do things. As I have indicated, there is a growing gap between the politics of Europe and the people of Europe.
It is exactly this question that will be the focus of a conference tomorrow in The Hague, jointly hosted by the Dutch and the British Governments. The ‘Sharing Power in Europe’ conference will look at how regional and national parliaments can work more effectively with European institutions, including the European Parliament, and how we can get the right balance between action at the regional, national and European levels to deliver the best results for our citizens.
I should like here to express great appreciation to Jan Peter Balkenende, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, for first proposing that such a conference be held – he did so at the June European Council – and to our colleague, Bernard Bot, the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, who has helped the British Presidency to take this idea forward and to host the conference tomorrow.
This is the 48th time that a British Government minister has appeared before Parliament since the beginning of the UK’s Presidency of the European Union and, with six weeks to go, I am happy to tell you there are still many more ministers on the way. That is an indication of the seriousness with which we take Parliament.
A part of all this effort has to be to bring Europe closer to its citizens and to make European Union legislation lighter and more relevant. As globalisation has made it more difficult for the people of Europe to relate to its institutions, so too have those people, our citizens, become more critical about the nature of European Union legislation. They are much more impatient of a
regime and more strident in their belief that methods of regulation cannot, and should not, be a proxy for outcome. Too often – it is true of all parliaments and unions but it is particularly true of the European Union – the method has been seen as the same as the outcome. This is not the case. Businesses, non-governmental organisations and Member States want new European rules, for example, to fight unfair competition, to protect the environment or to improve our legal systems. However, they want action that makes our lives better, not more complicated. Standardisation and harmonisation do not add value by themselves.
Thanks to the efforts of the Commission under President Barroso, there are many positive signs now. For example, the Commission has listened to what businesses and people want and has proposed a lighter regulatory touch in financial services. This will help promote a globally competitive European financial sector. The Commission’s three-year action programme for simplifying the
is another very welcome step, as is the recognition that the European Union does not always need to get involved in those areas where it used to get involved. Hence the decision to get rid of a 1968 directive which regulated the number and the size of knots in wood. There may have been a reason 37 years ago for the European Union to regulate the number and size of knots in wood. However, today we ought to leave that maybe to Member States or just to the judgement of those people who buy wood from a timber dealer. Why not?
The proposal to see whether we can simplify the way in which employers have to give compliance reports on 20 separate directives on health and safety at work should lessen the burden on employers, giving them more time to focus on workers’ needs – maybe on creating jobs – than on paperwork.
As a co-legislator, the European Parliament has a critical role to play in all this. Let us take REACH – which was the subject of a little excitement outside as I came in and, I have heard, a little excitement in here. It is controversial how far you regulate the European chemical industry to protect the consumer. None of us wants to be poisoned by chemicals. Nonetheless I believe that Europe’s record on this is exemplary and second to none in the whole of the universe. Equally, none of us want to see, in a globalised world in which barriers have come down, Europe’s chemical industry brought to its knees so that the regulation, which is a very fine one, ends up regulating an industry that has disappeared, to be replaced by industries across the world in China, India and elsewhere, where the regulation is far less good than it is today. That is the dilemma facing Parliament, as it faces all our peoples.
We have to recognise the difficult cases. The proposed changes to the Working Time Directive are a good example of well-meaning legislation that will not achieve what those changes are set out to do, and where method and outcome have become grievously confused.
We are all agreed that European labour markets must embrace decent standards of protection for our workers. Europeans must have rights at work, but they must also have jobs in which they can exercise those rights at work. My Prime Minister said recently that we hoped to resolve the outstanding issues on this directive during our Presidency, and that remains our goal.
Let us be clear about the nature of the challenges we have to address. The Working Time Directive is justified as being about health and safety, and in part, it is. But rigid limits on total hours worked are not the answer. The United Kingdom has one of the best health and safety records in the whole of the European Union. Since you ask, we are second best in terms of days lost through injury and, I believe, third best in terms of deaths at work. We have shown by our record that a strong health and safety record judged by outcomes is entirely compatible with flexible labour markets and flexible working hours. Rigid pan-European limits on working hours will not deliver health and safety for our workforce, particularly where the rules are unevenly applied.
Some European partners have rightly, I believe, expressed great concern that there are other Member States in which working time limits are being applied per contract and not per worker. Some of those countries are the same ones that say there have to be rigid limits; but when it comes to enforcement within their own countries, there is a dodge taking place and in the place of enforcement per worker – which has to be the basis for health and safety – it is per contract. Therefore, if people have two contracts – two jobs, one person – then they can evade the limit, entirely unregulated and unprotected. It does not make sense from a health and safety point of view. It does not make sense from an employment practice perspective. It does not make sense in terms of the reputation of the European Union of applying fair and sensible regulations across Europe.
We have to find ways to implement and enforce the directive which match the needs of all labour markets. We must ensure that all workers enjoy proper employment rights and that none are forced by the rigidities of this directive into a grey economy, for that is what is happening.
The blunt truth about the directive is that in seeking to reset European limits and standards, we risk infringing individual workers’ freedom to work the hours they choose. We will undeniably restrict employers’ flexibility to adapt to changing businesses and seasonal demands and, in doing so, will threaten the very jobs on which workers’ livelihoods depend. That cannot be right. It is vital that workers feel safe and appropriately protected in the workplace. It is good business as much as it is good politics.
Today, I want to report back on the informal summit at Hampton Court. Much of this is now familiar to you, but what was achieved three weeks ago was important. At the beginning of the summer, the people of Europe gave a clear signal that they were unhappy with the way in which Europe was heading. They felt detached from European politics and politicians. At Hampton Court, Europe’s leaders took a significant step towards providing a response to that concern by reaching broad agreement on a direction for Europe’s economic and social policy. Much of the leg-work had, of course, already been done by the European Commission and published in its excellent paper ‘European values in the globalised world’. If I may say to President Barroso, I thought that paper was one of the best and most insightful papers that I have read on the future of Europe and its nations in the last three years.
We need to judge how much of this should be fixed at European level and how much we should trust national governments, employers and trade unions to agree on an approach that reflects labour traditions and good practice within individual Member States and across Europe. After all, the minimum wage, another aspect of labour regulation in which I happen to believe passionately, has always been left to Member States. I believe that is quite right. Now is the time to leave far more issues concerning working hours to Member States as well. That seems to me to be an excellent example of an area where Europe, in addressing the challenges of seeking to engage more closely with our citizens, must go forward with a lighter touch.
When the United Kingdom took over the Presidency of the European Union we also inherited the need to conduct a wide debate on the future of Europe. The Hampton Court summit was a vital element of that debate. But the debate is far from finished. The process of constructing a modern, confident Europe will be an even longer one. This is a journey which governments, politicians and parliaments, including this one, cannot take alone. We have to bring the benefits of Europe to the people of Europe and take the people with us.
With 20 million people unemployed across Europe and youth employment running at 18%, the main task for all of us who believe in the social model for Europe is to get Europe back to work and to give our citizens the tools to compete in the global market.
The Hampton Court summit identified six key areas, backed up by a range of specific policies, in which the joint efforts of Member States and of the Commission can bolster Europe’s economic prosperity and collective security.
First, there is research and development. We need a strong technological foundation if European companies are to stay ahead of the competition, particularly that posed by the Asian economies.
Second, there is investment in our universities. We are lagging behind the United States and, in some key respects, China and India as well.
The third is facing up to demographic change within the European Union. The EU currently has four people of working age for every elderly citizen, but over the coming decades this will fall from a ratio of four to one to just two to one. At the informal summit EU leaders therefore agreed that we had to examine in much more detail the relationship between legal migration and the EU’s future economic needs.
The fourth concern was energy. How do we handle soaring global energy demand while supply remains tight? The summit recognised that the solution requires action on a number of tracks. We have to diversify our sources of energy and approach our current major energy suppliers in a more coherent manner. We have to use our market capacity and power as users with those who are the suppliers. We also have to pursue energy efficiency and clean technologies and develop within Europe a much more genuinely open energy market. It is open in some countries, but not in all countries. I do not call that an open market."@en1
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