Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-02-Speech-1-093"
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"en.20090202.15.1-093"2
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"In the wake of other initiatives, we proposed to the Committee on International Trade of the European Parliament that an oral question should be raised with a debate in plenary on production and employment in the textile and clothing sector in different Member States of the European Union, because we consider this urgent and indispensable.
We also proposed that this debate should include the participation of the Council and be concluded with a resolution by this Parliament; however, these proposals did not have the support of other parliamentary groups.
More than a year has passed since the debate held in this Parliament on 12 December 2007. We raised the alarm at the time that, if measures were not taken in defence of production and employment in the textile and clothing sector, we would continue to be faced with the slow agony and destruction of a large part of this strategic sector. Since then, and as had happened previously, thousands of jobs have been lost and innumerable companies closed, with 350 000 jobs and 5% of companies having vanished in the last two years alone.
Is that what the European Commission claims to be competing through restructuring, we would ask. Since then, and as was the case previously, workers have continued to be faced with unemployment – all too often without payment of the compensation or back pay due to them – with intensified exploitation, with more insecurity, with late payment of wages and with deregulated working hours.
Certain causes and people are responsible for this situation, such as those who promote the liberalisation of the textile and clothing trade and the relocation of production with a view to maximum profits, thus pitting a large part of the sector against competition based on double standards defined from the start.
Faced with this situation, the European Union has either turned a deaf ear or taken mitigated measures which far from provide an answer to the problems and needs of the sector. The European Commission does not consider the textile and clothing industry to be special, as it claims to, unlike other sectors. Together with urgent measures which need to be implemented by each Member State, the European Union also has a duty to provide a response to the grave problems with which the sector is contending.
Commissioner, when will binding rules on attaching labels of origin be applied, with the adoption, for example, of the ‘made in’ regulation? When will the same consumer safety and protection requirements be applied to imported products as are demanded for products made in the European Union? How will the European Union continue to monitor in real time import trends and customs inspection and control, keeping the sector fully informed and invoking safeguard clauses wherever necessary? How will it use the 2007-2013 financial framework, including the so-called Globalisation Adjustment Fund, to uphold production and employment in the textile and clothing sector, in particular in the small and medium-sized enterprises affected by liberalisation? When will there be a monetary and foreign exchange policy that does not penalise the exports of certain Member States? When will the Community programme, proposed by this Parliament, be created, and the financial resources to modernise and promote the sector and the diversification of industrial activity be unblocked, particularly those directed at the least favoured regions which are dependent on it?"@en1
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