Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-13-Speech-2-419"
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"en.20051213.63.2-419"2
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".
Madam President, in the strategy for 2006 we will have special initiatives for the new Member States, taking the report into account.
It is a basic policy that consumer protection is an integral part of the internal market and we cannot have completion of the internal market without consumer confidence and consumer protection. Therefore, I emphasise to those Member States that usually need more encouragement that this is also an investment, not just a human rights obligation that we owe to our citizens. We also make an investment in the growth of the economy by investing in consumer protection.
The situation in the consumer organisation area is problematic in many new Member States. Some Member States have too many organisations – about 100 – while others have too few. Therefore, without interfering with the right of assembly or with private rights, we need to encourage stronger organisations, maybe federations, but this is something on which we can only advise; we cannot enforce it. That applies to financing too. The responsibility for most of the financing of the operational costs of the consumer organisations lies with the national governments. We can encourage, we can suggest, we can try to convince, but it has to be decided by the national governments. The European Consumer Centres, which play a great role, can carry out that function. I am happy that, by next year, all the new Member States will have their own European Consumer Centres.
I agree that the issue of volunteer work is very important for the consumer organisations. In our calculations, when we award projects, we take volunteer work into consideration as part of the contribution in kind. In that way, we help the organisations cover their part of the contribution to their financing through this volunteer work, which is a great help to the consumer organisations.
On training, we can train the trainers. We can train the permanent staff of organisations who have to train the volunteers. As regards logistical – and especially language – problems, we do not have enough specialised people who can train in all the languages. So we train the consumer organisation staff who then can train volunteer workers.
I agree with Mr Kristensen’s suggestion that we have to remind ourselves that the new Member States have no derogation on joining the eurozone and adopting the euro. If this is an obligation for new Member States, we might as well work with them and their citizens so that they can properly prepare, and in a timely fashion, for the adoption of the euro.
With regard to education, I agree. We have the Consumer Diary, as you know, which is distributed in schools. It was very well received. I have figures from the new Member States. Of course, there is still room for improvement next year. I encouraged the Ministers for Education to increase the number of diaries that will be distributed to schools and students. Hopefully, we will soon be introducing the concept of a Masters Degree in consumer protection, which will be an incentive for young people to study this specialised area.
Once again, I congratulate the rapporteur and thank him for this interesting debate."@en1
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