Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-18-Speech-2-403"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20081118.31.2-403"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, let me begin by saying that if Ieke van den Burg had raised this issue this morning, I gladly would have dealt with it. I had asked you whether there were any other issues you would like to raise and, if you had, I would have spoken to you about it. If you had raised any issue at all – including the weather in Ireland – I would have discussed that with you as well. I have no problem doing that.
I do not have any problem at all as to what the European Parliament decides, because that is your job and that is what you must do. But the background to this particular proposal has to be kept in mind and, since I appreciate your position, I would ask you to appreciate mine.
This particular proposal was put forward in the context of reducing the administrative burden on small companies. It was part of the simplification of the business environment. There are estimates of what this proposal would achieve: reducing the cost annually by EUR 600 million. So the reason for putting forward this proposal was to reduce administrative costs for small business. As I pointed out in my earlier remarks, the whole project of reducing costs has been welcomed by the European Parliament in various resolutions.
So this is the context in which this was put forward. With the idea of bringing down administrative costs and simplification for smaller business we came up with this particular proposal.
You can hardly expect me then to accept amendments by the European Parliament that go in totally the opposite direction by not reducing administrative costs but increasing them. If the European Parliament feels that, in this particular instance, the balance of advantages weighs further in keeping this the way they want, so be it. That is a perfectly legitimate viewpoint. But this cannot be reconciled with the original objective which you brought forward, which was to reduce costs. If Parliament and others feel that for all the reasons you have outlined it should be kept like this, you can hardly expect me to stand up and agree with you that this is going to reduce administrative costs when it is going to do the opposite – in fact it is going to add to costs rather than reduce them.
The amendments tabled by the two European Parliament committees mean that the only change that Member States would have to implement following the adoption of this directive would make the use of an electronic platform mandatory. No reduction in the current administrative burden would be achieved by the savings which we expected from our original proposal, which have been assessed, as I said, in the impact statement, at around EUR 600 million per annum. So adopting a directive that leads to no reduction but only to cosmetic changes would definitely give a bad signal concerning the overall reduction of the administrative burden that we have been talking about.
So I would ask Members of the European Parliament to respect my position also. If the view of Parliament seems to follow that particular line – and there will be a vote on it tomorrow – that is your view and you are fully entitled to that position. I have no difficulty with it. But you have to respect my position in that I can hardly accept amendments that go in the opposite direction to the original purpose of bringing this forward in the first instance. We should not fall out about it, but I will not be in a position to turn logic on its head and say that what the European Parliament is doing is all right, because it is increasing administrative costs rather than reducing them.
I can listen to the reasons you put forward for keeping it as it is – and perhaps there is some validity in them – but that is not what we started off doing; that is not the reason why we brought forward this particular proposal. So
!"@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"c’est la vie"1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples