Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-18-Speech-2-286"
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"en.20081118.29.2-286"2
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"Madam President, Mr President of the Commission, at the end of your speech you said that we must send out a clear signal to the electorate. I totally agree.
However, when I take a look at the programme, the theme often seems to be ‘carry on as before’. That may be the right thing to do in some areas but in other areas – above all in the area that we are discussing today – it cannot be right. We have to send out the signal that we have learnt from the crisis and that we are going to act differently to the way we have acted in the past. If you add the sentence, ‘Europe benefits from open societies and open markets but rules have to apply to both of them’, then it would be right, but perhaps not clear enough. We need rules so that Europe can benefit from open societies and open markets. This must be made clear and it has not always been the principle followed by the Commission.
In your composition – if I may put it that way – you mention a ‘sudden crisis of confidence’. For a long time now, Mr Poul Nyrup Rasmussen has been pointing out what might happen. Mr Schultz has also been talking about it for a long while now. The crisis in confidence was therefore not that sudden. Yet some people in the Commission were of the opinion that we do not have to regulate anything, that it would turn out alright, that the market would regulate everything. However, that was not what happened and change must be made.
My second point is this. There is a subject which is still not part of this programme but which is very important for the citizens of Europe, namely the general public and public sector services. I mention this specifically because a crisis has now developed in some countries in connection with the postal service. This is not the fault of Europe or the Commission alone. However, it can be attributed to a particular attitude, namely that the market should rule in all sectors and it should be open in every respect, thus giving some postal services the incentive to acquire higher profits elsewhere instead of providing services to consumers, to the general public.
This is taking us in the wrong direction. At the very least, I would have liked to have seen an unambiguous statement at the end of your programme indicating that you will speak up for these public sector services and say how they should be dealt with, both regionally and locally, and that the market does not regulate everything after all.
Finally, I would like to endorse one of your points: we have a new US Government. I would like to ask you, Mr President, the Commissioner and everyone else to use the time and the next few weeks to work with this government to ensure that we create a genuine partnership for a European, and also global, social market economy. Let us take advantage of the opportunity afforded by a new US President."@en1
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