Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-008"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20061115.3.3-008"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we are today reaching the end of a debate that has been going on in this House for more than two years, on the subject of the services directive. I believe that we can be entirely happy with, and proud of, the work we have done on this issue.
There are still a couple of points that we need to debate in Parliament and they are points that we have already debated. I believe that the Commission can provide an important answer to these questions today. Specifically, it can clear up a couple of points that are absolutely fundamental for us, relating, in particular, to labour law, social security entitlements, criminal law and the orientations that the Commission is to provide under the services directive and that the Commission, as far as I am aware, will not be using in order to undertake to provide interpretations of the implementation of the services directive, but rather to ensure that the services directive represents an aid to the Member States. Interpretation of the texts is a task for the Court of Justice and not for the Commission. The Commission has understood this and that is something we can very happily live with.
Mr President, I now very eagerly await the statement that the Commission is about to give.
I am not, of course, the only one to have worked on this matter. Many of my fellow Members have played their parts in ensuring a constructive collaboration. Allow me to just name a few people I would like to thank as a way of thanking all those who ensured such a positive collaboration. Thus, I would like to thank my colleagues Mr Goebbels, Mr Swoboda, Mrs van Lancker and Mrs McCarthy, as well as Mrs Thyssen from the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, Mr Jonckheer and Mrs Rühle from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance and Mrs Jäätteenmäki from the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. All of them have made great contributions to our success.
There is, however, one person I would like to single out, and that is the shadow rapporteur from the PPE-DE Group, Mr Harbour.
I would also like to express thanks on behalf of Mr Schulz, who asked me quite specifically to do this yesterday evening, for the constructive cooperation he has experienced, as it was neither easy to create a common text, given the differences of opinion that are represented in this House, capable of achieving a broad consensus and without leading to divisions between Parliament and the citizens of the European Union, nor could it be taken for granted that this feat could be accomplished.
This constructive collaboration can also be seen in the text that we are debating today. It led to there being a symbiosis between the interests of employees and consumers and those of the economy. We have succeeded, with this text, in making a real contribution towards putting people more in the centre of politics. In my opinion, it is essential to our future work in Parliament that we should make it abundantly clear that we are shaping politics around the people, around the citizens of Europe. The economy is important, stability is important, but the most important thing of all is the people on whose behalf we make policy.
With this common text that we have created we have succeeded, through the removal of the country of origin principle, for one thing, in protecting the rights of workers, namely labour law, social law, consumer protection and other important issues relating to rights, and in ensuring that we have a positive regulation. It was very important for us to have ensured that the rights of employees were advanced, thereby averting an unhealthy competition between the social systems of the Member States.
By deleting Articles 24 and 25 we ensured that the services directive does not affect or jeopardise the Posting of Workers Directive, and that we were able to work well together on this area. By removing quite significant elements of the services of general interest from the scope of the services directive, we have ensured that a solution was found to a truly enormous problem. This is in the light of the fact that this services directive is in fact, of course, a directive for commercial services, a fact which means that health services and social services, which have totally different requirements due to the special interests involved, do not fit within the scope of the directive.
We have not, however, merely done something for employees; we have also ensured that there are gains from this services directive for the economy, the service providers. We have ensured that the free movement of service providers across borders has been made much easier. This we have achieved by means, for example, of having actually codified the principle of the freedom to provide services, of having made it crystal clear that protectionist measures in the Member States must be abolished and that single points of contact are available in order to help service providers to move around the European Union."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples