Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-186"
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"en.20081215.17.1-186"2
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"Mr President, as coordinator for the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I very much welcome this proposal and thank Jacques Toubon and Heide Rühle. These two people, particularly with Heide Rühle’s leadership, have represented our group interests extremely well.
As many of you know, I am very passionate about the internal market. However, I am also very passionate about the fact that Member States must have complete control over defence and the procurement of defence equipment, in their own national interests. The benefit of this proposal is that we have skilfully combined the two things. I thank the rapporteur, and indeed the Council, for accepting amendments that reinforced the fact that Member States will continue to have complete control over export licence conditions, the product concerned, how that product is used and where it goes.
On the other hand, as an enthusiast of the internal market, and particularly as someone who represents an area with many small manufacturing businesses which are very active in the defence sector – and Britain has the largest defence manufacturing sector in the European Union – I must say that this proposal will be of major benefit to companies that are working to meet large, complex defence contracts. There will be no need for the sort of bureaucracy that the Commission has, quite rightly, identified. According to its statistic, which you heard earlier, around 11 000 licences are currently issued annually, and not one has been refused since 2003. Effectively, what we are doing is to simplify the process so that we can actually address proper control, instead of issuing pieces of paper that really do not make a single bit of difference to the SMEs concerned. So, at a time when we have also approved the Small Business Act, we are looking to move the single market forward and to improve the industrial base.
This is a very worthwhile proposal, and I am sure the House will support it tomorrow."@en1
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