Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-060"
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"en.20070904.5.2-060"2
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"Mr President, I welcome the fact that my colleagues in the Conference of Group Presidents have agreed to my proposal to ask the Commission to make a statement to us before any decision is taken on the future of the Gdansk shipyards.
The Directorate-General for Competition did not need this new case to illustrate its thinking. It has already attracted so much protest that many observers who can hardly be suspected of anti-liberalism have themselves regarded it as dogmatic for some time. In this instance, a restructuring plan is only seen as convincing if it provides for 1 000 workers to be laid off. There are plenty of previous examples of companies in difficulties being told to axe hundreds of jobs, failing which they will have to pay back the aid they need to survive. In the present case, tell us what shipyard operates without subsidies. I do not think there is any question that the award of subsidies has to be subject to conditions. But the problem is that those conditions always involve heavy sacrifices for the workers.
In that respect, although the successive Competition Commissioners I have known are not usually noted for their soul-searching and social fibre is clearly not one of their attributes, this time the leading directorate-general of the Commission has gone even further by showing that it is as indifferent to political issues as to social problems. By threatening the very existence of this place that is so emblematic of Poland, is the Commission considering the political implications of the message it is sending the people of this new Member State, barely three years after its accession? That is apparently the least of the worries of the guardians of free and undistorted competition. They think there is a time to celebrate the key role of the Gdansk shipyard workers in the freedom struggle – a historic role, as Mr McCreevy said – and another time to impose the iron laws of the free market on them.
There is still time to stop this irresponsible action. The first step, in my view, is to start substantive talks with the Polish trade unions, indeed with the European Federation of Metalworkers. What is needed is to clarify the real amount of aid paid to these shipyards and, above all, to find a solution that avoids job losses.
Apart from that, this new case, which highlights to the point of absurdity the narrowness of the criteria now applied in the name of preventing distortions of competition, reinforces the view of my group that, before any final decision is taken on the future European treaty, it is vital to have a thorough, public and wide-ranging debate on the aims of the Union and whether these are consistent with the policies put into operation.
The story of the Gdansk shipyards is a reminder that a political structure that proves unable to face up to its own contradictions and progress beyond them is doomed. That lesson is still just as relevant today and some European leaders would do well to reflect on it."@en1
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