Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-08-Speech-1-196"
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"en.20100308.19.1-196"2
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"Mr President, in the UK, there are now 2 460 000 unemployed. Youth unemployment is 20% in the UK. In France, youth unemployment is 24%. It is 25% in Italy and an incredible 39% in Spain. Big companies have been firing people for the last two years and they will continue to do so.
The best hope for the unemployed is with small and micro-enterprises. However, EU directives make it difficult for micro-enterprises to operate successfully. EU regulations stifle their growth and, for once, the Commission is doing something sensible with its proposal to exempt micro-enterprises from some accounting regulations. In the UK, we have over 1.7 million micro-firms. If these firms were able to hire just one additional person, the UK’s severe unemployment problem would, in large part, be solved.
We have all received the circular from Mr Sterckx and his friends. Mr Sterckx and his friends oppose this partly on the basis that exempting very small firms from the full blast of EU accounting directives somehow runs counter to the single market. This is a completely ludicrous argument which only a Belgian Member of the ALDE Group could possibly have come up with. I know that in this Parliament, if you criticise Belgium or the Belgians, you get fined, but I would remind you of a bit of history. Ninety-six years ago, Britain entered the First World War in order to protect the territorial integrity of Belgium. I would suggest that Mr Sterckx partly repay that obligation by ceasing to attempt to destroy Britain’s economy and Britain as a nation state."@en1
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