Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-056"
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"en.20070904.5.2-056"2
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"Mr President, as the MEP for Gdańsk I feel I have a two-fold responsibility: firstly, for the fate of 3 000 jobs and an establishment which has symbolic status in Poland, and, secondly, for ensuring that together we comply with the principles of rational economy on which the European Community is based and which has brought prosperity to millions of Europe’s inhabitants. I therefore believe that today’s debate will not be a political demonstration. There is too much politics surrounding the Gdańsk shipyard. To date it has been over-exploited politically. I trust that this will be a step towards finding the best possible solutions.
I also believe that such intentions have motivated the radical left in Parliament, which has called for this debate, but I would point out that they are not idealists seeking a system of social happiness, but practitioners of real socialism, referred to in Poland as “post-Communists”, who twice shut down the Gdańsk shipyard as an act of political revenge, thereby undermining its economic credibility and creating one of the sources of today’s problems.
I was a witness to and a modest participant in the collective elation in August 1980 which gave birth to Solidarity, subsequently a movement of 10 million people. I know that there are among the 3 000 employees of the present shipyard people who at that time risked their lives in the name of human dignity, human rights and other values enshrined among the standards of the European Union. They did so with courage but also prudence, and without resorting to violence. Consequently, that approach, which did not involve the use of violence – an instrument of terror – may serve as a guide for us in the twenty-first century.
I would, of course, like the major centres of workers, the shipyards, the mines and the steelworks which formed the mainstay of Solidarity, to lend the shipyard’s cause infinitely greater support than isolated dissenting voices abroad, and I would like these centres to now become examples of economic success in the free market. However, this will be very difficult, even impossible in the short term, as we can see from the experience of major centres of heavy industry in western Europe, which have taken entire decades to turn around economically. This is the case in particular in the shipbuilding sector, which is faced with competition from the Far East, Korea, China and Vietnam, where low labour costs and, above all, a range of overt and covert forms of State intervention are decisive.
I would like the European Commission too to be aware of the complexity of the situation, because if it is not taken into account frustration will build up and a political populism will take root in our country. I can understand the frustration of the shipyard workers who have a sense of what they are due historically and who, as they say, are confronted with soulless bureaucracy. There is also frustration on the part of the European Commission which is dealing with an exceptionally spirited and recalcitrant establishment which would give many an authority a bloody nose. I know that the workers at this shipyard should not be punished for the rather inappropriate, or simply clumsy, way these things have been handled by the present government. I also know that the basis for agreement must be a long-term vision and not hastily drafted plans. That long-term vision means an investor who will equip the shipyard with modern technology to replace the obsolete slipways currently at issue. And I believe that today’s debate is a step in precisely that direction."@en1
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