Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-13-Speech-3-448-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120613.28.3-448-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, good afternoon to you all.
The Member States will have to be proactive, consistent and ready to make an effort and choose truly European solutions. I am thinking, in particular, of the issue of deposit guarantees, which is currently being held up at second reading, due no doubt to a lack of ambition on the part of Council.
We now finally know that Europe must be built with its people, and not without them, with the true democratic legitimacy that you represent. That is why, further down the road, there must be strengthened political union, as Chancellor Merkel was saying recently.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we are talking about the future of the internal market, which has been, for the last 60 years, the first stage, the first basis for European political integration. The role of the Commission is indeed to propose working for the Union as a whole, the EU 27, on the basis of the Community method, with only one single market including the financial services. This EU27, soon to be 28, is, might I remind you, our foremost asset in working towards recovering growth.
All current and future reforms are more likely to succeed if the big single market functions better. Neither Parliament nor the Commission has been surprised by all that has been said in this debate on growth over the past few weeks.
For two years, we, the Commission and Parliament, have worked together to put this strategy back on track with Europe 2020, the Monti report and then the reports by your fellow Members, Mr Grech, Ms Kalniete, Mr Correia de Campos and Mr Buşoi. Thanks to all these combined efforts, I was able to submit to you, on 13 April 2011, the Single Market Act, with a view to adding this potential for growth and confidence beyond the consolidation of public finances, to reconstructing the bases for growth from a better functioning of the single market.
We had worked well together. The Commission finally produced the 12 priority measures of the Single Market Act, which are now in the legislative pipeline and we have even managed to come to an agreement between Parliament and the Council on one of them, namely, standardisation. I hope that, in a few days, we will come to an agreement on a second of the 12 key measures, this time relating to the European patent. European companies have been waiting for this for 30 years.
What more should we do, ladies and gentlemen, as we have not yet achieved this return to growth? First, make what we have already decided within the framework of the internal market function properly. I shall call this the ‘quick wins’, a new growth in services.
I shall not go into detail about the importance of the service economy here on our European continent but services do account for 65% of GDP and 70% of total employment. They have been behind the creation of almost 11 million jobs over the last 10 years.
If there are positive results from the transposition of the Services Directive, we shall have to go further given the importance of this text for the daily functioning of our internal market.
We, in the Commission, believe that we could find between + 0.8% and + 2.6% growth in the internal market if the Services Directive reached its full potential. That is precisely the objective of this partnership for new growth in services, which the Commission adopted some days ago.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a critical point in European integration: there will be an important European Council meeting in a few days, and there is the choice that the Greek people will make on Sunday … However, I certainly do not believe that this should be a time for pessimism or alarmism. It should be a time to be proactive, responsible and determined. The world is watching us and waiting to see what we do. That became apparent to me again, recently, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Canada and in the United States.
First, a more ambitious implementation of this directive, a peer review, through country-specific recommendations in the context of the European Semester that you have just mentioned and by adopting a stricter and more proactive policy towards breaches with the objective of zero tolerance of clear breaches of the Services Directive. Then there is the improvement of a tool that you support, as do I, that of points of single contact. That is the first act of this partnership.
Secondly, better functioning on the ground of the single services market. How do we achieve this? By optimising synergies between the different instruments of the internal market: directives on services, professional qualifications and
commerce.
We have carried out ‘performance tests’, as I already mentioned, to see how, in three sectors – construction, business services, which is recruiting at the moment, and tourism – the freedom to provide services could interact better with professional mobility, benefits and opportunities in
commerce.
Finally, we are seeking to guarantee the benefits of the Consumer Rights Directive by combating any discrimination that affects the end users of the services on account of their nationality and/or their place of residence.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is why I believe that we must be more ambitious and go beyond the Services Directive and the service economy. That is also the objective of this very practical text on the governance of the internal market, adopted by the Commission some days ago. This is not a technocratic concern. You can take my word for it.
Not only is legislation which is not implemented useless, it often adversely affects the functioning of the internal market. It harms the principle of competition within the Union, it creates imbalances between countries, and it also deprives the citizens of their rights.
That is why we want to ensure the proper implementation of all the single market texts. It is a subject on which you have worked a great deal, particularly Ms Kalniete, Mr Busuttil and Ms Bastos.
The Commission, therefore, has just adopted this communication for new and better governance by calling on the Member States, Parliament, the Council, the Commission and our own services to show that we can be more effective.
We shall adopt three lines of approach in our work: firstly, targeted action in those sectors with strong growth potential, obviously the services and financial services of which I have just spoken, but also network industries: transport, energy, the digital market.
We have identified key legislative measures for each of these sectors, and the Commission, with the Member States, is committed to redoubling its efforts to ensure that they are properly, quickly and correctly implemented, for example, with increased assistance for transposition and the use of peer review.
We should remind this world that is watching us and waiting to see what we do that not all of the world’s problems come from Europe. We should remember that the financial crisis was not born in Europe. It was born very much in the United States with all the consequences that continue to affect us. We must say to this world that is watching us: ‘You can be demanding, impatient, critical of Europe, but be fair and equitable. Be realistic and look at what we have been doing for the last two or three years to learn the lessons from these crises and to restore order to the economic, budgetary and political functioning of the European Union’.
We want to see quick results in these sectors, and we shall apply the zero tolerance principle in the event of any delays in the transposition of our legislation. If problems persist, we shall then deal with these breaches with the utmost speed.
The second line of approach is to evaluate and monitor the scope of our efforts using the mechanism of the European Semester, spoken of by Mr Rehn. I do not think that this semester should only cover economic governance or budgetary surveillance. I think that, over the same financial year, it should cover efforts towards cohesion and competitiveness. We could then measure the performances of the Member States by means of benchmarks and naming and shaming, and where there are shortcomings, we will provide complementary measures and country-specific recommendations.
The third and last line of approach, Mr President, is a single market at the service of companies and citizens: better regulation, better use of IT tools, the ‘Your Europe’ portal, better functioning of SOLVIT and, finally, promotion of single market centres in each Member State.
I shall now say a few concluding words on a subject that will involve us over the coming weeks – and I know that Mr Harbour, whom I thank, is very committed to it – which is the second stage of the Single Market Act, which we are drawing up for the end of the summer. The 20th anniversary of this single market should not be an occasion for nostalgia or melancholy, as I often say it is, but an opportunity to be proactive.
We are going to retain all the advantages of the initial version of the Single Market Act, the competitive social market economy. These four words are important. They are clearly reflected in the 12 levers of growth that we have chosen together. Twelve new proposals that will drive growth and employment, that will deal, in particular, with sectors where the single market does not operate correctly or completely – energy, transport, services – and which, finally, will ensure the social and territorial cohesion of which I have just spoken.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are going to work on and we should be careful to be clear about what we have already decided together and then also to open up public debate, as we shall do on the occasion of the Single Market - Together for New Growth week, which we shall organise together from 15 to 22 October.
Undoubtedly, the time has come, ladies and gentlemen, to state our confidence, as I am doing to you, in our institutions and in our capacity to take the right decisions and to implement them, our confidence also in the capacity of Greece and the Greek people to retain their place and their role in the euro area and in the Union.
One thing is certain and it is that we will not get out of these crises by the same route we went in. We are tackling this crisis of confidence, of the markets and, first and foremost, of our citizens, and we must assert our strategy for exiting the crisis and open up new prospects, in the short and in the medium term, for economic and political integration within the European Union.
What are the problems and what do we need?
We now know that there can be no single currency without solidarity and without joint economic discipline. That is why we need renewed economic and monetary union. We have made progress. Mr Rehn has won the support and the commitment of the European Parliament
We know that the financial crisis and the vulnerability of the banks are at the root of the States’ budgetary problems and the euro crisis. That is why we need to go further and, in particular, construct the banking union mentioned by President Barroso.
Whether we are talking about supervision, the single rulebook, or resolution, we must go further than what has been proposed over recent months or what has been proposed just now."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"e"1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples