Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-22-Speech-2-018-000"
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"en.20120522.4.2-018-000"2
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"Mr President, we have heard a lot of fine words today about small businesses being the backbone of society and our economy, etc., etc., but what about the reality? I am reminded that President De Gaulle scoffed at the English and called us a nation of shopkeepers. But, Mr President, it is our small businesses and our shopkeepers that employ the vast majority of the workforce in the United Kingdom.
In my mobile surgery, that goes around every town and city in the West Midlands on a regular basis, I meet shopkeepers who say they are being strangled by European Union regulation; business rates are too high; there is not enough training; there is not enough access to finance. Yet all they hear of, all the time, is more EU funds – the UK being the second largest contributor to the EU but having few recipients of aid and training.
Take the European Globalisation Fund: every other country in the EU has had access to this fund except the United Kingdom. This is pertinent in Ryton, near Coventry, where Peugeot closed down in 2005. It also closed plant in France, but the French got training and the people of Coventry did not. Then there are these ‘JEREMIE’ funds, providing funding for small businesses around Europe, including in the south of France – a country that is a member of the G8. Is there any in the UK? No, there is not. Absolutely disgraceful!
As I said, we are the second largest contributor to the European Union; we need to cut out the middle man, fund our own small businesses and leave the European Union."@en1
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