Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-24-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20080624.3.2-015"2
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".
Mr President, President-in-Office of the Council, President of the Commission, during the past six months a number of decisions have been taken by the Council that Mr Janša failed to mention; and yet they are the type of decisions that strike a chord with the citizens and that influence what people think about the European institutions.
I shall mention three such decisions that were taken this month alone. I hasten to add that I am not incriminating the Slovenian Presidency but rather all those Member States which made it possible, in each case, to achieve the required majority.
The first example: the agreement reached on 9 June on the draft directive on working time. In this instance, the Council more than failed to meet expectations, it literally infuriated the entire trade union movement: the refusal to challenge the derogation enabling the maximum working week to be extended to 65 hours, or even more; unconditional ‘annualisation’ of working time; and the introduction of the concept of ‘inactive part of on-call time’ which will no longer be considered as working time. Long live social Europe!
The second example: the outrageous directive on the harmonisation of the rules governing the deportation of illegal migrants. This text was condemned not only by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the International Human Rights Federation, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community and the fledgling Latin American democracies but also by eminent figures who are least likely to be suspected of excessive severity towards the European Union, such as Jacques Delors. Welcome to a Europe of human dignity! This also applies to all the European institutions, including Parliament.
The third example: the launch, on 16 June, of official negotiations with Israel with a view to significantly improving relations between the European Union and that country, and this after a year of secret talks. I would point out that a delegation representing all of Parliament’s political groups stated unanimously, on 2 June in East Jerusalem, and I quote:
‘we strongly feel that without serious signs of good faith translated into tangible improvements on the ground, the time is not yet right to upgrade EU-Israel relations’.
Good luck to Europe’s credibility in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean!
It is against this background that a European Council was held which, to top it all, has just deferred by four months consideration of possible measures to combat rising oil prices that, as has been said, are strangling tens of millions of ordinary people. Oh, I forgot: ‘the European Council agreed that more time was needed to analyse the situation’ and to understand the reasons for the disenchantment of our fellow citizens. If I have understood the President of the Council correctly, ‘communication’ will do what remains to be done to convince people that ‘all is well’.
Good luck!"@en1
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