Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-054"
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"en.20060315.3.3-054"2
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"Mr President, 2005 was the first year in which the revised Lisbon Strategy was implemented. The strategy is now better known and has been debated in the Member States, and the national reform programmes have been adopted. That is progress, but it is just about the only progress there has been.
Otherwise, Mr Winkler was very bold in stating just now that the Lisbon Strategy had been relaunched. In fact, it is somewhat bogged down. It is, as Mr Schulz said, held back by a tiny financial perspective and by anaemic growth within the eurozone, as well as by a flagrant lack of investment – both at European and Member State level – in the universities, research and innovation and lifelong learning. In the same way, we are struggling to complete the trans-European networks, and renewable energy sources and biotechnologies are still the poor relations where our investment and research efforts are concerned.
Let us move up a gear, you said, Mr Barroso. Getting into first gear would be a start, I am inclined to reply. If the Lisbon Strategy is to be a success, it needs resources, a coherent financial perspective with defined priorities, investment on the part of each Member State and a macroeconomic framework that genuinely supports growth.
As you said, Mr President, there is also, however, a need for people to take the Lisbon Strategy to heart. If the growth strategy defined by the European Union is to succeed, it needs to be supported. That is why we should be doubly mistaken to give up the social dimension of this strategy and let ourselves be taken down the road of all-out liberalisation, precarious employment, enfeebled social rights and undermined public services. To do so would be to weaken the bases of the EU’s future competitiveness and to turn away from a Europe of excellence. It would also be to turn Europeans off the European Union and its policies.
The social dimension is not inimical to competitiveness. As we have often mentioned in this debate, the Nordic countries have been able to implement reforms successfully because they have negotiated them and arranged for them to be accompanied both by collective investment in research and innovation and by a new economic flexibility and significant compensation for workers in terms of social benefits, lifelong learning and protection of rights. However, all this presupposes that a high level both of tax deductions and of social redistribution will be maintained. In the same way, Germany has come up with all the aces where exports are concerned and, in common with other European Union countries, has demonstrated that, even with high salary costs and a system of social protection that is among the most efficient in Europe and among the most extensive in the world, it can remain competitive internationally.
Let us, then, stop invoking global competition as a way of denigrating the European social model. Let us invoke it with a view to investing more in Europe’s assets, in human capital and in research and innovation.
The route to renewed growth is now basically via consumer confidence, an increase in internal demand, a boost to purchasing power and a fairer distribution of income and added value between shareholders and salaried employees.
In conclusion, Mr Winkler and Mr Barroso, I should like to say that the European Council will be judged on two counts: on the one hand, the lessons it will draw from Parliament’s vote on the ‘Services’ Directive – there must, emphatically, be no return to Bolkestein – and, on the other hand, freedom of movement for workers from the new Member States within the European Union. It is time to grant them that basic freedom."@en1
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