Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-14-Speech-3-075"
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"en.20071114.2.3-075"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the Communication from the Commission on the European interest that has served as the basis for today’s debate is nothing more than a kind of discussion paper. It is not the Lisbon plan for the next three years. It is a document which is intended to stimulate discussion in the European Council and the European Parliament, so that the Commission can feed the results of that discussion into its proposals for the next Lisbon cycle. These proposals will not be made until December. They are not yet on the table, and so those honourable Members who criticised the Commission for not having presented any tangible proposals were labouring under a misapprehension.
What I am hearing in Europe today is that China and India must change their environmental and social standards. So they must, of course, but the Chinese and Indians perceive such demands as pure European protectionism, as we rose to prosperity with the aid of low social standards and low environmental standards, and now we are telling others that we want to keep what we have but that they cannot have the same.
Such a policy, ladies and gentlemen, is doomed to failure, I can assure you. The only viable approach for us is to demonstrate to these developing economies that there is another way, that it is possible to turn the environmental and social challenge into an economic opportunity. Hence the term ‘environmental industrial policy’.
I believe we are largely in agreement on that point, and against that backdrop the Commission will now work hard to present its proposals for the next Lisbon cycle. These will then be dealt with at the spring meeting of the Council in March, which gives the European Parliament ample opportunity to voice its opinion on the specific initiatives and proposals before the final decision is taken in March of next year.
That is not what today’s debate was about. The Commission’s aim was to find out what you, the representatives of the European voters, have to bring to the Commission’s attention for the formulation of the Lisbon plan. I am pleased to say that I can respond favourably to much of what has been said here.
The guidelines will remain the core instrument of the new Lisbon package. As President Barroso made clear, the instrument has worked, and we shall not change the instrument as such, but it will, of course, be formulated so as to enable us to take due account of the experiences of the past three years and to attach greater weight to the issues that have come to the fore during that period.
Let me cite a few examples. We shall have to place greater emphasis on the connections between competitiveness, energy and the environment. There have been several requests to that effect in today’s debate. That is entirely correct. It is time to stop considering policies in isolation. We need a fully joined-up approach. We must attach greater importance to the formulation of firm proposals designed to ensure that global competition, which is certainly what we want, takes place on a level playing field with the same rules for everyone. We must devote more attention to finding ways for social policy to underpin structural change. In today’s debate, there seemed to be a cross-party view that this is the real big issue, and indeed that view is justified.
Let me say something on that subject. I believe it is wrong to see investments in social stability and social security as nothing more than charitable handouts. On the contrary, they are also investments in economic potential, for there can surely be no doubt that Europe’s economic potential depends on a highly motivated and highly efficient labour force, and the reason why we possess this asset is that we have high wage levels and a high level of social security.
It is not the case that economic growth and social welfare are mutually incompatible. In actual fact, as several speakers have said today, each complements and nurtures the other. I regard that as a major consideration. I should also point out that, if only because more and more regions and sectors are suffering from a lack of trained and skilled labour, the question of employability must be addressed far more forcefully than hitherto. So I believe we are on the same wavelength in many of these matters.
The Commission, let me add, shares the view that the turbulence we have recently been experiencing in the financial markets calls for international, multilateral action. Things cannot simply be allowed to run their course because what we have here, as has been said, is an inbuilt structural defect in the international financial system. It is not about human error on the part of those managers who are now being put out to grass with severance packages worth 100 to 200 million dollars; no, it is the result of a structural defect.
I would like to make another three brief comments on the keynote debate that has taken place here today on the subject of globalisation. Firstly, it is so difficult to forge a common European policy on the basis of this debate because there is no agreement as to what the European interest actually is. In our everyday work, in fact, we are constantly confronted with a kaleidoscopic definition of Europe’s interests. Depending on the situation at any given time, Europe’s interest may lie in low supermarket prices in one Member State or in a high level of industrial employment in another, and this is a conflict of aims which is not easily resolved. Europe’s interest may lie in a high level of employment in the steel industry in Liège, to cite a very topical example, or in high environmental standards in European emissions trading. We are continually faced with these conflicts, and there is no uniform line that 27 Member States can follow in order to define their common European interest.
Secondly, we cannot adopt the attitude that globalisation was fine as long as it meant the poor countries of the South being dominated by the rich countries of the North, that it was good as long as those circumstances obtained but is bad when the countries of the South become competitors. That is no way to react. Nor is it acceptable to come up with demands for high environmental and social standards in the developing regions while refusing to change our own policies."@en1
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