Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-04-Speech-2-244"
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".
Madam President, before I begin my speech, please allow me to make a brief reference to the serious accident that took place yesterday in Valencia and that cost the lives of 41 people.
Our competitive advantage must come from knowledge and quality, and not low prices. However, that often means sectoral adjustments with social consequences. Although responsibility ultimately lies with the private sector, these consequences must be dealt with through specific resources, such as the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund.
This Communication recognises that the use of the different industrial policy instruments needs to be adapted to the context and the specific characteristics of each individual sector.
The Commission also proposes seven new extremely important cross-sectoral policy initiatives: increasing the protection of intellectual property rights and combating counterfeiting, the creation of a high-level group on competitiveness, energy and the environment and support for access to new markets for our products in a fair and reciprocal fashion.
This new policy must be complementary to the work done in the Member States and, in this regard, we have advised that it will be necessary to do more work on the problems faced by the new Members.
This new approach must seek consensus, involving key agents, social interlocutors and Member States in the process of political decision-making at an early stage. The new industrial policy must promote investment in people’s qualifications and equipment so that people can adapt to change and take advantage of the new opportunities that it offers. Training and flexibility are precisely the Union’s most important resource and competition parameter.
We are talking about competition based on R+D, on innovation, quality and design, on infrastructures, on new ways of organising production and on investment in pioneering sectors. These measures are urgent, since European industry’s competitors are moving quickly in that direction.
I would like to end by stressing the need to increase the transfer of knowledge and the application of the results of research to new products and processes. Technological platforms are of particular importance for this objective, which are a model that has led to successes but that must find mechanisms to give SMEs access to the results of the technological platforms and to apply the latter’s innovations.
As some Members know, I was born in and I live in the city of Valencia and I would therefore like to begin by expressing my sincere condolences and solidarity to all of the families of the victims of this tragic accident and wishing all of the injured a speedy recovery.
The fact is that a drama on this scale is incomprehensible in the present day, and I hope that the specific causes of this accident will be fully clarified so that no other family ever has to experience such a tragedy.
With regard to the report that we are debating today, I would like to begin by congratulating the Commission, in particular Commissioner Verheugen and his team, on the Communication that they have presented on the future of the manufacturing industry.
In view of the challenges we are facing, we cannot remain passive or take a defensive position, but we must also recognise that the invisible hand of the market is not going to provide a sufficient response. An initiative that puts industrial policy back on the table and promotes the conditions necessary to safeguard the European Union's manufacturing industry’s future is therefore an appropriate one.
Europe's aspiration must be to remain a great industrial power and it must not be content simply with developing the services sector, whose future is often intimately linked to the existence of a solid industrial base. The Member States and the regions must not therefore wait until times are critical, with the irreversible consequences for industry that that entails, before taking action.
We are not talking today about a policy of subsidies for great industrial dinosaurs; that model represented a bottomless pit for public resources and hindered the creation of new opportunities for creating stable jobs with futures.
The European manufacturing industry is facing several important challenges all at the same time, such as enlargement, globalisation and relocations. There is no question, however, that the Union’s greatest challenges are coming from the outside, in particular those resulting from globalisation and specifically the competition from the emerging Asian countries. These challenges mean that we must change mindsets and take advantage of new opportunities.
The present industrial structure of the European Union’s economy as a whole does not put us in the best position to confront the current process of globalisation. The European Union’s trade is still concentrated in medium and high technology and low or intermediate personal qualifications, which exposes the European Union to competition from producers from emerging economies."@en1
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