Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-400"
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"en.20061025.29.3-400"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by expressing my gratitude to the representatives of the other groups – Mrs Cederschiöld, Mr Lambsdorff, Mrs Rühle – and also to the representatives of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, who had a hand in the production of this report, for we were able to exchange views in a constructive and fair way, and managed, in any case, to achieve agreement on over 140 amendments in committee, so that there remain only 23 to be considered today or tomorrow, although it has to be said that compromises had to be reached in respect of them too.
That this House is supportive of this instrument is shown not least by our willingness to use money from the Structural Funds for it; I am sure that it is not common knowledge just how much effort we have put into getting that.
Given our sympathy for European local authorities and the expertise of my fellow-Members on the Committees for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and on Economic and Monetary Affairs, I am convinced that we will end up with a law that everyone can support and accept, and one that will be proof against rulings from the European Court of Justice.
We have tried to strike a balance between two powerful opposing parties – the business associations and the local government associations – which put forward their no doubt legitimate interests in a forceful manner.
What I have to say at the beginning of my speech I wish to address to them. What I want to say to the businessmen is that, despite all that we have heard, I want to make it clear that we in this House take it as self-evident that local authorities should engage in economic activity, and, indeed, that returning certain activities to them is reasonable and legitimate. What I would like to say to the local authorities is that invitations to tender, whether at the national or European level, do not absolutely have to be arbitrary, but offer the transparency that is needed to benefit the public and prevent corruption. I get the impression from the debate that their respective associations did not always see it that way.
I have attempted, by means of my report, to strike a balance that would secure more guaranteed competition for the private sector and would give the public sector, in the shape of the local authorities, more scope for inter-municipal cooperation.
Tomorrow, then, we will be deciding where this House stands as regards future mandates for action by the Commission, which – or so my group believes – should, wherever possible, be in the form of legislation. What this is about is the legal and political aspects of the way in which our municipalities organise services of general public interest. That they do, of course, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, which we here in this House also take very seriously; after all, many Members of this House have strong links with local authorities, having been active in municipal politics before they came here.
We are also, though, asked how we, as the convinced Europeans that we are, would shape the internal market, and there is a plethora of rulings from the European Court of Justice and from other courts at the national level. Complaints and Commission proceedings make municipalities and investors nervous about making investments at home and initiating projects, and so it is necessary for the European Union to take action.
What, for example, is the substance of European procurement law? What clarifications or additions need to be made to the institutionalised PPPs and in-house transactions? We see ourselves as having the vitally important function of considering how to proceed. My group takes the view that legislation is needed, that it is not enough for the Commission, attempting as it does so to bypass this House, to act by handing down interpretive communications or other instruments of that kind.
I therefore once more appeal today to the Members of this House, when they vote by roll-call tomorrow, to cast a vote for this House’s right to govern its own affairs. We want neither a great laborious enterprise, nor an opening-up of the last procurement directive, which was not transposed in all the Member States – it was not, for example, in Germany – but what we want to see is clarifications and additions, and they must not be made without reference to Parliament.
I will be quite frank in saying that we have no solution to the problem of inter-communal cooperation, which was – as you will see from the amendments – the most controversial area. The line we take is that it cannot, as a general rule, be excluded from the scope of procurement law, but nor should it be subject to general tender. What that means is that we need an intelligent solution to this bone of contention, for intercommunal cooperation makes sense for the communities from which we come, and will certainly be useful to them in the future."@en1
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