Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-14-Speech-1-106"
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"en.20090914.24.1-106"2
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"Madam President, this afternoon – a couple of hours ago – a Magna senior executive reaffirmed what we had already feared, or known: that the Antwerp plant is to be closed down permanently. It is true that there is talk of a quest for alternatives, for alternative employment, for a different future for the plant, but no one knows what that actually means. It is idle chatter, in a way, and it seems to be a tactic to appease the workers and the many others concerned in Antwerp for the time being: to keep them quiet and compliant.
I think that, for this whole dossier, the European Commission must not do what it has announced its intention to do, which is to wait a bit more, to spectate and count the blows a bit longer. I think that the time for action is now, and that the Commission must state now, more clearly than it has just done, that its approval of this acquisition dossier will be conditional upon the acquiring party applying only objective economic criteria as and when reorganisation operations are required. There must also be complete clarity and complete openness as to the competitiveness reports that may or may not exist for the various plants, and as to whether or not the Commission had access to such reports.
After all, it is common knowledge that the Antwerp plant is very competitive, and it would be unacceptable, in my view, for what may well be the most competitive of the plants to be hit as a result of the massive aid from the German Government. With this dossier, the fate of very many thousands of workers in my country is at stake, as is, once again, I fear, the credibility of the European Commission – and I am not optimistic in this regard. After all, often enough it is the same old story. As Commissioner Špidla pointed out, European professions of faith are many and loud but, when it comes to the crunch, political leaders look after their own country’s interests first. This was the case in the recent banking crisis and, I fear, is also the case now in the Opel crisis, with German authorities serving German interests first."@en1
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