Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-227"
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"en.20101006.16.3-227"2
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"Madam President, I do not know about companies having 400 years to pay off fines, but that does sound rather draconian. Nonetheless, Commissioner, I realise that you are not necessarily in a position tonight to make policy on the hoof either. To that effect, I will be submitting some questions to Commissioner Almunia on the issues that we are talking about tonight.
I would like to make two brief points. Firstly, I would request that the Commission deliver on the impact assessments for the 2006 guidelines. I understand Mr Almunia’s staff have already indicated that this can be done. I am looking forward to seeing them. Perhaps I just need to be up-to-date on that, but I would be reassured if that was the case.
Secondly, we have heard tonight that all the focus is on fines – and fines that are imposed on companies which violate the terms of competition. There may be a graduation of fines, but these do not seem to deter them. They still do it.
We may have to be inventive about what we do. In the case of price fixing, for example, quite often, small enterprises further downstream may be affected by the consequences of companies having done this and, through no fault of their own, fall foul of these particular fines.
What if the Commission was to think about the social impact for a minute? What if the Commission was to think about adopting different approaches? In the UK, for example, the arrangements allow for the disqualification of directors, instead of imposing the fines, which actually deals with the culprits involved and allows the workforce and the companies to survive – an intelligent philosophy perhaps, and one we might borrow from as a model of what we could do, or even just as a pilot.
There are other examples – as we have heard from around the floor, from other countries – where I am sure we could do the same. If we apply some intelligence to this, we can do a lot to secure that workforces for the companies out there are not equally affected by the bad practices of the directors who adopt this cartel philosophy."@en1
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