Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-04-Speech-1-128"
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"en.20090504.17.1-128"2
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"Madam President, when future generations come to judge this Parliament and its work on the working time dossier, I suggest that they will view how MEPs behaved during the trialogue process with sheer incredulity. They will see that here was a directive born and bred in the early 1990s when the Socialists were the largest party in this House and when the Left was running the majority of Member State governments; that here was a directive which, however well intentioned, reflects the standard Socialist dogma that people cannot be relied upon to make their own choices about their own work/life balance, that politicians always know best and that, of course, European politicians know best of all; that here was a directive on working time that has simply never worked.
The opt-out, originally devised for the UK, became an opt-out that 14 other countries progressively needed to use, and we heard from the Czech Presidency today that at least two others are now joining that group. Meanwhile, 21 out of 27 countries could never make the directive work as far as their national health services were concerned, so the Commission came up with proposals to resolve this.
We have a directive which clearly cannot be implemented, and what has been the reaction of this Parliament? That the people are wrong; that the Member States are wrong; that the Commission is wrong and that all must be forced into this one-size-fits-all strait jacket, which plainly does not fit anybody. Understandably, the Council refused to give way because, like MEPs, Member State governments were elected to open up opportunities for people, not to restrict their freedom. They, however, remembered what certain MEPs have forgotten.
So the opt-out remains for the present, but so do the problems, and the issue now rolls forward to the next generation of MEPs in the next mandate. I just hope that our new colleagues, right across the House, will show more sense, will show that they are listening to the people and not dictating to them, will bin the directive rather than ban the opt-out, and will start afresh."@en1
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