Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-07-Speech-3-121"
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"en.20080507.14.3-121"2
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"Mr President, when the Commission tells Europe’s social partners that they should ‘try again’ to get along with each other, it reveals a certain ignorance with regard to the political reality. The industry is not willing to participate and the Commission cannot think why the social partners’ mechanism functions so poorly.
In a rapidly changing industrial landscape, in which swift adaptation is required, decision-making bases that depend on reaching unanimity, as is the case for BUSINESSEUROPE, are impractical. After all, the ITUC votes by qualified majority, which makes flexibility and change possible. It was because of this decision-making mechanism of the social partners that, in 1994, politicians like Helmut Kohl and the European Parliament negotiated and pushed through the European Works Council Directive, but even then, provision was made for revision and further adaptation five years down the track. Now it is 2008, and the Commission again wants to initiate a negotiation procedure that will inevitably last beyond this legislative term, even though industry is not willing, or is unable, to negotiate owing to its internal decision-making mechanism.
To recap, for your information, this is the same situation as in 1994. Do we want to improve an instrument as vital as the European works council, as Mr Barroso has explained here in plenary, or do we just want to pretend that we wanted a revision anyway and that in the end it failed because of the circumstances, as has so often been the case with other social issues?
If the latter, then we are not bringing enough energy to the matter to achieve a better solution and the result of all our efforts on social and employee-related issues during this legislative term will look even worse. This must not be!"@en1
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