Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-04-Speech-1-127"
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"en.20090504.17.1-127"2
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"Madam President, recognising a failure is the first step towards being in a position to achieve success. The conciliation has indeed failed, but not the chance to rebuild the dialogue, starting today.
The difficulty lay not in the practicalities of individual derogation from the maximum 48-hour working week, because it was precisely to overcome that difficulty that Parliament offered long transitional periods; the problem stemmed from highly differing points of view when it came to establishing a Community rule with the ultimate aim of ensuring health and safety at work. The subsequent problem was also regulating on-call time in accordance with Court of Justice rulings.
With regard to the main problem of the opt-out, it is my view that what the Council was offering was legally contradictory and, above all, went against what I consider to be essential elements for a Europe that cannot, and should not, relinquish its social dimension without losing its identity. It was unthinkable to allow into Community legislation a general, permanent law that went against the recommendation of the Commission which, in its social agenda, urges Member States to comply with the International Labour Organization convention. It was also possible to reach an agreement by acting on the set of exceptions and general rules; in addition, we could have made use of the contribution of social stakeholders who, if their independence is respected, can provide fair, effective agreements.
In short, Parliament’s proposals contained solutions that could provide what companies need, that is, flexibility to adapt working hours to different workloads, because the fact is that no two sectors are the same, nor companies within each sector, and because what we need and what my country in particular needs – we hold the sad record of having the highest unemployment rate in the European Union – is for our companies to create more employment and fewer redundancies.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am among those who are convinced that we need urgent reform of our social systems; I, too, believe it is entirely possible to reconcile economic efficiency with the hope for social improvements and to reconcile freedom with justice, which is precisely why we must establish limits and minimum social standards for all Member States."@en1
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