Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20061115.3.3-014"2
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"Mr President, I wish to thank my colleagues Malcolm Harbour and Evelyne Gebhardt, and many others, for their excellent levels of cooperation. In particular I want to thank Commissioner McCreevy, as, without his rational approach to cooperation, there would certainly have been no progress.
Services are a crucial source of growth and jobs in the EU. During the period 1997-2002 approximately 96% of new jobs were in service sectors. It is therefore important that there should be no unnecessary barriers to growth at national level. The Services Directive is a step in the right direction.
I know that there are people in this House who are dissatisfied, because they think that we have not gone far enough, but there are also those who believe that Parliament and the Council took too great a leap. This proposal now before us is a compromise; it is what it was possible to accomplish given the situation.
The European Parliament has been accused of nibbling away at the Commission’s original proposal. At the same time, however, nobody has bothered to mention the large number of areas to which the directive still applies. The Services Directive covers such sectors as the construction industry, business services, fitting and installation, trade and distribution, and travel and leisure services. The spectrum is very wide.
The purpose of this proposal is thus to liberalise services, thereby reducing their cost. The demand for various services relies on price, but confidence is just as important. If a service provider does things on time and well, confidence grows and so, then, does the market. It is not the directive that will determine that: the responsibility lies with the service provider.
The free mobility of the workforce is just as important as the Services Directive for a viable EU internal market. At the time of enlargement to the east, only Sweden, Ireland and the United Kingdom allowed free and immediate access to their job markets to nationals of the new Member States. Now that a new round of enlargement is to take place, once again there are Member States which are erecting barriers. These new potential barriers are very troublesome, and cause problems for the liberalisation of the internal market. They are a step backwards. If we are to take a step forwards with the Services Directive, it is to be hoped that progress will be made in the same way as regards the free mobility of labour."@en1
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