Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-145"
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"en.20101006.13.3-145"2
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"Mr President, first of all, I want to thank the Council and Commission for their statements today and I want to thank the ALDE Group, the Greens/EFA Group and the GUE/NGL Group for their support in having this matter on today’s agenda.
I think it is most important that Parliament is involved in that process. We have to bear in mind that we must address the concerns and demonstrate that Europe is serious about creating a social market economy and not a single market on its own.
The new social clauses do not relate solely to services of general interest as implied by the EPP intervention earlier this afternoon and, as regards social services of general interest (SSGI), we need to come to conclusions on these matters which have been heavily debated over many years, rather than rehashing old arguments.
As rapporteur on the future of social services of general interest, I look forward to working with all the groups which recognise the need for a strong social market economy and I hope to bring forward concrete proposals to resolve the dilemmas faced by providers of SSGI.
As you are no doubt aware, Europe’s citizens have high hopes regarding the development of a more coherent and dynamic social dimension to European policies and legislation following the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. Indeed, one of those important debates in Ireland during the referendums on Lisbon concerned the new social clauses, including Article 3, Article 9, Article 14 and the social protocol, and indeed many others in relation to disability and equality.
It is always important that we live up to citizens’ expectations. It is doubly important at this time of economic and social crisis for many millions of our citizens who have already lost, and many more who will lose, their jobs, their homes, their savings, their pensions, their public health services and, indeed, educational opportunities for their children because of the crisis and the remedies being applied.
It would be deeply destabilising for the European Union if the College of Commissioners and the European Council were to take the view that these new treaty articles change nothing and continue treating social objectives as secondary to market objectives. If we fail in our responsibilities, there are waiting in the wings extreme xenophobic and intolerant political parties willing to capitalise on the anger and the discontent that is out there.
My specific request to the Commission today, and to the Council, is to accept that we need a dynamic process for making progress with regard to services of general interest, particularly social services of general interest.
I regret the statement today by the Commissioner. I hope, over the next few months, to persuade him that he is wrong, that we do need a dynamic process, that we do need a high level taskforce which includes not only himself and other DGs but members of civil society, the trade unions, the Council and the Committee of the Regions.
We need a mechanism which will drive the change which everybody recognises. Commissioner I have heard you saying, and I have heard Mr Barroso saying, that the stakeholders apparently tell you that there is no real problem. The stakeholders are not telling me that. I have met dozens of them in the past six months. They are telling me there are administrative problems and there are legal problems and that they need to be addressed urgently. They are not going to be addressed urgently, I am afraid, on the basis of what you and the Council said here today. I hope, as I say, I can change your mind over the next few months. However, there is an urgent need for a mechanism, a high-level mechanism which will include the stakeholders and ensure that the decisions that need to be made are made and followed through."@en1
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