Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-14-Speech-2-204"
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"en.20061114.36.2-204"2
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".
Mr President, even though I do not doubt that the Commission’s staff, in drafting the work plan for 2007, did their work with great exactitude and precision, I have to say that I do not think that either the priorities for the work to be done or the tendencies it highlights really respond to the demands of the present time.
They have to do with problem areas for which the EU does indeed bear responsibility, but which go well beyond its bounds. I am thinking here of such priority areas as poverty, social exclusion, growing inequalities and divisions in society, or, indeed, the commercialisation of social life, the destruction of nature and culture, and of such issues as the loss of democracy, repression, war, militarisation or, speaking more generally, the way in which global problems are addressed and commitment to the achievement of the millennium development goals – something that we ought particularly to care about in view of the fact that the UN has again found that the number of people going hungry is increasing further.
The fact is that these problems and conflicts are not at the heart of the work programme, and it is not on them that the Commission is concentrating its efforts. Despite the good things in the working programme, which we certainly endorse, I do believe that its being put into effect will entail these problems getting worse, for what is still central to the Commission’s efforts is the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy, which has competitiveness as its objective, and I believe that will lead to global social and economic problems becoming more acute.
There is no room in all this for the question of social models, which we in this House have debated for so long. What that ultimately boils down to in the Commission’s work is the issue of greater flexibility, and I have to tell Mr Barroso that such a narrow view will not, I think, enable the social dimension of the European Union that he has announced to become reality.
There is a second priority area that I would like to address. It is stated in the programme that what economic life demands is more internal market rather than more regulation, and the programme prioritises the creation and development of a European internal market for armaments. Perhaps I might make bold to ask that someone might tell me of just one deficit within the European Union that this European internal market in weaponry, thus created and brought in through the back door, might actually remedy, and also inform me as to who actually authorised the Commission to develop one.
It was, after all, not least because of something of that sort that the draft constitution failed and was rejected. I regard this as irresponsible, and I think that adjustments are needed here as a matter of urgency if policy is actually to be developed in the European Union instead of people merely throwing slogans around. These adjustments must result in people once more being able to identify much more strongly with the European Union.
General statements about people’s fear of the dismantling of social services are of no use to us: we have to actively do something to counteract it. What people need is real projects and initiatives; that is why we have to address the real issues. There are alternatives, though, and I believe they can be summed up in three projects: making the EU democratic, making it socially and environmentally sustainable, and making it into a force for peace, one that endeavours to resolve global problems democratically and in a spirit of solidarity."@en1
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