Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-04-Speech-2-187"
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"en.20060404.21.2-187"2
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".
Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking the honourable Members for their remarks. I shall reply to some of the specific questions.
On the excluded sectors, it is important that we all remember that the provisions of the Treaty continue to apply to those services outside the scope of the directive. The College of Commissioners will debate the question of health within the next couple of weeks and the scope of the initiative will be decided at that time. Mr Kyprianou will have the lead and Mr Špidla and myself will be submitting our ideas to him. While I cannot be more specific today, I can say that at a minimum it will cover the issue of patient mobility and reimbursement for health expenditure. We will have to wait to see what Mr Kyprianou will bring forward.
Mr Harbour is being a little pessimistic about the reception given to this revised proposal. It is true that there has been a degree of negative comment in some of the media, but views will change with time and when people have had more time to digest what was voted on by Parliament.
I have vigorously sold the modified proposal to the Council of Ministers. At a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Sunday, 12 March 2006, I vigorously defended the intended revised proposal. I told the ministers that I intended to follow what the European Parliament had agreed in the main areas. While some ministers may have been somewhat sceptical initially, at the end of the meeting most were quite pleased as to what the outcome was going to be. The fact that the European Council last week overwhelmingly endorsed the vote in Parliament shows that the debate has moved on considerably.
It is a good proposal. Mr Harbour outlines many of the initiatives and the good points in it and we should be prepared to sell it as a very important step in the services area and as a good day for Europe when this particular directive is adopted.
As I have said in committee meetings – and recently I attended a meeting of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection – it is important to realise that the previous Commission’s proposal was never going to see the light of day as it was drafted. So those who defended the original proposals would have to recognise the political reality: it was never going to become a piece of legislation.
What I as Commissioner and the College of Commissioners recognised was the political reality that we could not keep trumpeting how brilliant the proposal was while knowing in our hearts that it was going to remain on the shelf. We adopted the pragmatic approach of saying that we could see whether we could get a broad agreement among the Members of the European Parliament from the major groups because, if we could succeed in doing that, we would have a better chance of seeing the revised proposal through the Council of Ministers.
In the meetings of the Council of Ministers that I attended there were as many divisions as there were in the European Parliament. So I think Parliament has clearly shown the way. Now that we have a revised proposal, we all should be prepared to sell it and to recognise that it is a major step forward. Some might describe it as an incremental step forward, but a major step forward it is. It will be of considerable benefit to the economy of Europe, because what is at issue here is galvanising the European economy to be able to sustain the kind of growth rates that would deliver the number of jobs that are so necessary. In my opinion the modified services proposal will do that.
Given the broad consensus that has been reached on the most difficult points in this proposal, I am certain that the Council of Ministers will want to work closely with the European Parliament to try to reach an early agreement. We in the Commission will do all we can to facilitate an early final agreement on the text. If everybody maintains an open and constructive approach, we can steer this important proposal to a successful conclusion."@en1
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