Services directive:
Green amendments needed to preserve Europe's social model
Following No votes in the constitution referendums in France and the Netherlands, the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament feel that fundamental changes to the Commission's proposal for a directive on services in the internal market are more necessary than ever before. The 'Bolkestein directive' is in complete contradiction with the sort of Europe that people want; a Europe with high protection of labour standards and other social and environmental factors both in new member states as well as old.
The Greens have therefore decided to table a series of strong amendments that would substantially change the legislation. The Green MEPs who follow the directive, Pierre Jonckheer (Belgium), Jean Lambert (UK), Heide Rühle (Germany), Jean-Luc Bennahmias (France) and Elisabeth Schroedter (Germany) talked about the reasoning behind the amendments at a press conference in Strasbourg. They explained that the amendments focus on a three-fold objective:
- to limit the scope of the Directive: the most coherent way is to establish a positive list of included sectors, and to limit this list to purely commercial services ; it must be crystal clear that services of general (economic) interest are completely excluded from the scope ; in order to take into account the changing nature of the services sector, it might be envisaged to use a more flexible method for the revision of this list
- to establish a coordination process in view of upwards harmonisation of provisions regarding freedom of establishment and free movement of services: the ambition of the EU should not be reduced to a "free trade area" in which there would be competition among the national rules
- to preserve the role of the States of destination: as long as this upwards harmonisation is not achieved, the laws of the country of destination (and not those of the country of origin) should apply, and the State of destination should be responsible for supervising their application.
[ENDS]