Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-01-20-Speech-4-038-000"
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"en.20110120.3.4-038-000"2
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"Mr President, it is a pleasure to listen to this debate. I would like to thank Mr Eppink for his report. Knowing his approach, I look at the report with admiration and am pleased that it was he who drafted it. It is also a pleasure to listen to the speeches of fellow Members, but there is something which I feel I must say. We are concentrating, here, on the work of the European Commission. We are accusing it of not having a strong position or a policy and of not fighting protectionism, but quite honestly, our opponent or our greatest problem – Mr Hökmark spoke about the fact that the European economy is not competitive – is the Member States. Meanwhile, the European Commission very often has no option but – acting under pressure from Member States – to try to protect free competition as much as possible.
In this Chamber several weeks ago, we talked among other things about special legislation for the coal market. On that occasion, however, we did not hear Members talking about free competition, but could only hear the voices of people demanding protectionist principles and the possibility of subsidising, for example, closed mines – that is what it was called – while in fact, the real issue was assistance for mines which are not going to be closed at all. We must, therefore, be consistent in our work, and that consistency is often lacking in this Chamber.
We have been talking about assistance for the banking sector. I fear that the European Commission, acting under that pressure from Member States, has only sanctioned that assistance, and today, when we talk about the report, which is, in fact, for 2009 – I agree, here, with the criticism – it seems to me that the report lacks an evaluation of the effects which that assistance has achieved and if, in reality, it has restructured the banking industry in a stable way. I expect, Commissioner, that this aspect – the evaluation of an important policy – should be present in the report.
The report also talks about the fact that the Commission is fighting protectionism, among others when we talk about the automotive sector, but there are examples – I come from Poland – where the best factory in the Fiat group was closed – perhaps not closed, but production was reduced – and production was transferred to Italy. This is obvious protectionism, and the European Commission should be fighting this problem.
I can give another example. In 2009, two Polish shipyards were closed. I come from a shipbuilding city in Poland, but the problem is bigger than two Polish shipyards. The problem is to do with the fact that, at world level, European competition policy forces the shipbuilding industry to fight mainly against the heavily subsidised shipyards of the Middle East, and today we have, in fact, closed down the shipbuilding industry in Europe through this competition policy, because we force them to compete against subsidised industries. It should be important to us for the shipbuilding industry in Europe to exist. Thank you, and I apologise for exceeding my speaking time."@en1
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