Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-12-13-Speech-3-334"
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"en.20061213.37.3-334"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank the President-in-Office of the Council and the President of the Commission for an excellent job. The list is long and you have also made preparations for the Middle East and for further progress.
I just wish to repeat what my dear friend and colleague the Chairman of the Socialist Group presented to you as an offer that you cannot refuse – a Sicilian offer. Let me say quite seriously that, yes, we want to keep moving forward with regard to Turkey and we do not want to shut the door on the Balkans.
However, to ensure that people are with us, we must do more. People are worried and insecure. They do not have answers concerning their job opportunities, their children’s educational possibilities. Do these two things have something in common with each other? Yes, they do. People within the European Union are uncertain about enlargement. Therefore, to make enlargement successful now and in the future, we need to have more jobs, we need to combine competition and social security, and that is where the PES and our Socialist Group come in.
I was not surprised to hear Mr Watson talk about competition. But I am surprised that he did not know our position. We are not against competition but against a one-sided approach to competition. The only way things work in modern times is to combine social security in a new framework with competition. That is an offer you cannot refuse, President of the Commission. I have it here, signed by me, and with greetings from my good friend, Martin Schulz, Jacques Delors – one of your predecessors – and myself.
What is it about? It is simple. It says: listen, dear citizens, Europe is the extra added value to ensure that our welfare states in the global economy do not enter into a competition of social dumping but enter into a competition of increased qualifications, better organisation of our welfare states, and reforms. They will not be reforms that people fear will take something away from them, but sincere reforms: we are going to reform and it will not be same as before. It will be better.
What I am saying is: let us unite our forces now and send a clear signal not just from the spring Council but each and every European Council. Let it be a fixture on the agenda to the benefit of people, to enlargement and to the unity of the European Union."@en1
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