Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-01-Speech-3-206"
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"en.20060201.19.3-206"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like straightaway to join others in thanking our fellow Member, Mr Ferber, for his own-initiative report. Allow me to present my point of view from two angles.
Firstly, together with my Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, I am delighted that this report will henceforth give us the opportunity to debate the legal framework that our Union should implement by 2009 with a view to regulating the opening up of postal services. Secondly, I support the method proposed, which offers us an approach to the process of modernising this sector that is both controlled and balanced.
Nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, while the aim of opening up postal services is, as has just been explained, one of modernising the sector of activity in question and of improving the services provided to customers, no one is oblivious to what is at stake in the reform or to our fellow citizens’ legitimate fears that a high-quality service will no longer be maintained and that the service will no longer cover all territories, including the remotest ones. It is therefore with a great deal of interest that I await the economic impact study due to be presented by the European Commission some time this year. It should be based on reliable economic data and on the results of consultations with all the interested parties, from the trade unions to the chambers of commerce and industry, via all the social partners concerned.
I also draw the Commission’s, as well as the Council’s, attention to the need to combat distortion of competition in all its guises. I am thinking, in particular, of VAT liability and tax harmonisation.
To conclude, I am counting on the Commission to propose relevant and fair schemes for funding the universal service, without second guessing choices that Parliament will have to make because, in the last resort, ladies and gentlemen, it is undoubtedly up to Parliament, as our democratic arm, to explain to the 450 million Europeans that the strong Europe that we want to build together belongs to them."@en1
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