Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-21-Speech-2-443"
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"en.20081021.43.2-443"2
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".
Madam President, my group requested this debate with you, Commissioner, because we disagree with you in practically every respect. In the current global economic climate, you cannot turn around and say that, just because certain regulatory conditions have not been met, the shipyards must be closed. If you close the shipyards now, in this economic climate, as you just stated, you will throw the entire region into economic disaster, and that is not on. The Polish Government – as well as you in the Commission and we in Parliament – therefore need more time. In such a tense economic situation, you cannot simply say ‘certain points have not been met, end of story’.
My second point is this. The argument that EUR 24 000 are being spent on each job is all well and good, but I will tell you something: I used to be mayor of a town in Germany where there was a coal mine in operation, and we were told that too much money was being put into each job, and so the mine was closed down. It took 20 years – 20 years – until we got back half of the jobs that were lost. It will be no different in the Polish shipyard cities. If you say today that it is all over, it will take at least two decades for you to restructure this region.
That is why it is necessary to focus efforts on keeping the sites open, not on closing them. I call on both the Commission and the Polish Government – as do my colleagues in my group – to make every effort to retain Poland’s shipyards, at all three sites. That is one of the decisive points that we want from you.
If the Polish authorities have not worked fast enough, if the action plans, the business plans, that you mentioned, Mrs Kroes, are not yet available, then I ask you: must the workers at the Polish shipyards be punished because certain authorities, or the government, have not done their job? That is more or less what you are telling us: the workers are paying the price for the shortcomings of the government or the administration, and that is absolutely unacceptable.
Therefore, mobilising the Globalisation Adjustment Fund is a good thing, but you need to mobilise it so that we can provide help on the ground, so that we can retain the sites, in order to preserve a competitive Polish shipbuilding industry.
This is also an important point for those of us Social Democrats who are not from Poland, and it is also why I am speaking in this debate. The Polish shipyards, sites such as Gdańsk and Szczecin, were an important symbol for us all of the Polish people’s democratic struggle against dictatorship. That is another reason why these yards must not be closed."@en1
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