Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-12-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20080312.3.3-027"2
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"Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of the spring summit, the economy is in turmoil, markets are deregulated, stock markets are crashing, growth is falling. That is international capitalism for you, creating wealth or destroying value at the whim of the markets, speculative bubbles, financial derivatives and crazed traders who, by the way, are merely doing what they are asked to do, i.e. obtain the maximum profit in the minimum time.
However, though the markets are that way, no human society can live like that. At any rate, it is this phenomenon that may give Europe its very meaning in this globalised market: a Europe that obviously cannot completely escape this turmoil, a Europe that is itself one of the main players in globalisation, often to its benefit, but that largely finds in globalisation its meaning and vocation to counterbalance crazed capitalism through public regulation, economic stabilisation, active public policies to support growth in the real economy, support for public and private investment in research, innovation, and European infrastructure. The monetary policy, for instance, ought to protect stability, which it does, but it also ought to stimulate growth and adjust parity in the best possible fashion to defend our exports, although as things stand today this is unfortunately not yet the case.
Finally and above all, our group stresses that the EU must counterbalance this destabilised high-finance economy with effective social protection, solid public services and guaranteed social rights for workers.
Mr President, Europe must now take much more action to anticipate and protect: it cannot merely act as an internal market within the vast overall market. It must be more socially aware. That is also the way to recover the support and trust of its citizens.
We now support the Lisbon Strategy, a strategy fundamentally based on these three pillars, which you have already mentioned here, but your words must be matched by action, by real EU policies; otherwise your social intentions will remain a dead letter.
That is why we have called for a revision of the guidelines since they can be used to pilot the project. We specifically ask you, however, for it is the substance that is important here, to relaunch the European social agenda. There must be, for instance, a Commission reaction to the Laval case. It must use its powers of initiative to propose a revision of the Posting of Workers Directive. There must be a truly ambitious revision of the European Works Councils Directive to allow social dialogue in major groups facing restructuring to be utilised effectively and in a timely fashion. There must be a revision, a real adaptation of the Working Time Directive to combat opt-outs and abuse of excessive working hours. The Temporary Work Directive must be adopted in order to combat casual employment. You must launch an ambitious lifelong learning programme so that this fifth pillar, this fifth fundamental freedom, is not just reserved only for an elite, but enables all people to fulfil effectively their own potential as workers to enable them to adapt to changes in the economy and the job market.
Mr President of the Commission, this is our message: use your power of initiative to help the Council to adopt an ambitious programme for a social Europe."@en1
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