Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-10-Speech-3-165"
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"en.20101110.17.3-165"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to officially present to the Members of this House the Communication on the Single Market Act, which was adopted by the Commission on 27 October, and to debate it here with you. We actually began our discussions yesterday at the instigation of Mr Harbour and Mr Grech, in another place but with several hundred political, economic and social stakeholders active at European, national and regional level.
We want to respond to these questions and challenges by working with businesses to return to strong, sustainable and equitable growth. We are proposing a number of measures specifically focused on innovation and small and medium-sized enterprises.
The Single Market Act includes the major issue of the patent, which we are discussing right now – hence, the complications with my schedule, Madam President – in the Competition Council under the Belgian Presidency. More generally, we want to make the whole regulatory and tax environment more flexible for businesses and to facilitate access to the funding they need to support their investments.
Lastly, in terms of boosting European competitiveness, we want to strengthen our external strategy in a spirit of reciprocity and mutual benefit.
In order to ensure that European citizens are at the heart of the single market, the Commission wants to demonstrate that the market does not constitute a barrier to the development of services of general interest and major infrastructure. We will produce a communication, which will undoubtedly be supported, enhanced and improved by Parliament’s contributions: a communication on services of general interest and public services. We want to make it clear that the single market upholds the social rights enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, that it can offer new development opportunities to socially innovative businesses that serve European workers and consumers alike.
We now come to the third chapter of the Single Market Act. This comprehensive approach only makes sense when it is situated in the context of improved governance, through increased dialogue and partnership with our businesses and our fellow citizens, but also between the European institutions, the Member States, regional and local authorities, and through better social dialogue. In all our work together, we are convinced that meeting the challenge of competitiveness, the challenge of generating the growth that European citizens expect, requires the help of every single citizen and every single business. It requires the help of every single community.
This is the aim, therefore, of the four months of European public debate that we want to launch together with you. Many commissioners, 13 of us, worked on the Single Market Act – for which I thank them – which has been approved by the Commission after lengthy in-house discussions. This issue is one of our top priorities, and we are debating these 50 proposals. We will listen carefully to what the various institutions and our various partners have to say, and at the end of our consultations, probably in February, we will finalise the list of commitments on which the relevant Commissioners will undertake to deliver proposals, within a maximum of two years. As a result, in 2012, when we come to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the single market, 20 years on from the commitments and proposals made by Jacques Delors, that anniversary will not be marked by nostalgia or melancholy – there is no place for nostalgia at present – but rather, it will be a proactive and dynamic occasion.
This is why we are setting the ball rolling today, as we did yesterday. For four months, my colleagues and I will be on hand to coordinate the European public debate that has begun today in the European Parliament. We will be seeking to play a constructive and very attentive role in it.
This is an important document. It is important, ladies and gentlemen, because we believe that Europe is being called to account on many fronts. The outside world has questions about the reasons for the crises. We have experienced an incredibly harsh financial crisis over the past two years, and its many economic, social and human repercussions are still being felt in all our countries. There is the economic crisis, in general, and then there are other crises that we cannot afford to ignore, such as the food crisis, even though less is said about them. Approximately one billion people are in danger of dying from starvation or lack of water. Then there is the environmental crisis, which is probably the worst.
We need to respond to these questions, but in addition to these external questions, there are internal questions, the most important of which is undoubtedly that being asked by the European citizens, who do not understand, who are often concerned, and sometimes angry, who remain unconvinced and have questions about this large single market that is the cornerstone and has been since the inception of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950 – this large European market that we are patiently building together.
The question being asked by our citizens, by small and medium-sized enterprises, is: what does this single market have to offer us? What is Europe doing for us? We need to give a positive answer to that question, which we do not always do.
This is what Mario Monti concluded in the report commissioned by President Barroso, a report which you have debated on many occasions and which contains many useful findings. For example, Mario Monti states that the single market is increasingly necessary and yet becoming ever less popular. Ladies and gentlemen, we are politicians, each with our own mandate, and when we hear conclusions of this ilk, we need to strive to ensure that what is necessary becomes popular and, in any case, that it gains support and is better understood.
This is why, in view of all these crises and questions and in accordance with our mandate, we wanted to produce a practical follow-up to Mario Monti’s findings, and indeed to the consistent findings that this Parliament, under the guidance of Mr Grech, whom I thank, has also come up with concerning the imperfect, incomplete, and occasionally disappointing, functioning of this large single market.
Hence, the document that we are presenting to you today, Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, is an original one. It is not something you can take or leave. It contains an action plan rather than a legislative proposal, an action plan that currently contains 50 proposals that we are putting forward for discussion, all of which are designed to improve the way the single market works in order to benefit small and medium-sized enterprises, growth and citizens. This market is a vehicle for promoting growth and social progress, not the other way around, as I have often said before.
We have just been discussing the directive on hedge funds and private equity. Let me say that I have a very clear strategy which I intend to pursue doggedly for five years. As I told you on 13 January, we want to and we will ensure that financial services and the financial markets, which are vital, once again serve the real economy, not the other way round. In doing so, we will ensure that the real economy and the single market underpinning it serve growth and social progress.
Our growth strategy, which is consistent with the 2020 strategy, is designed to make the single market work better. This market needs to be seen as the platform on which the European economy is built. We are convinced that if this platform can be made to work better than it does today – which is the aim of the action plan – then everything built on it – private and public initiatives, local, regional, national and European initiatives, the activities of associations and the whole range of other bodies within the market – will also work better."@en1
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