A difficult doctrine to define. The European Parliament has not managed to define a coherent doctrine on services of general interest (SGIs). I think I can safely say that the current Parliament won't manage to do so in its few remaining weeks. We will have to wait for the Parliament which will emerge from the elections in June, which should have the wisdom not to start the debate again from scratch, but to take full account of previous discussions and resolutions adopted by the current Parliament.
The result of last week's debate in plenary on the Miller report allows me to be so sure of this. In this column of 10 February, I observed that the result of January's debate on the Herzog report was a fundamental stage in the dossier's long history, which is of such importance for the "European social model" and which was globally positive, because several essential elements of a Community policy had been clarified and agreed; but at the same time, the resolution adopted was confused and partly contradictory. The compromises which were needed to reach agreement led to the Parliament taking up some of the "liberal" ideas and some of the opposing ideas, affirming the specific nature of SGIs and thus the need to reserve for them specific treatment in the context of the single market. Then, in this column of 24 February, I tried to sum up, and in that of 3 March I recapped the position reached by the political forces calling for an ad hoc European legal framework, and which felt that the competition rules should be adapted to the specific nature of the sector.
Just a few votes short. Now, the vote of 11 March proves that differences remain deeply-rooted, although the situation has very clearly moved on in ten years of discussions, and the terms of the debate have been radically cleared up. The report under discussion, by Bill Miller, a British Labour MEP, went far beyond the field of SGIs, focussing as it did on the Commission's communication on the "strategy for the internal market" in general for the period 2003-2006, touching on many other problems. But on most elements (transposition of directives into national law, Member States' responsibility for delays, need for measures to apply the new "public procurement" legislation, simplification of legislation on VAT, etc), there were no major differences of opinion. In fact, most of the amendments which were presented and voted on focused on SGIs, and they very often went in opposing directions. Votes on the most controversial points came within a very few votes, and were sometimes contradictory. A few examples?
I base myself on the summary of our editor (see our bulletin of 13 March, page 11), and on the extra elements she gleaned in Strasbourg, and on the texts of the various amendments which were either approved or rejected (some of which were submitted by the rapporteur himself). Only on the liberalisation of the market for water was the Parliament explicit; the statement that "the management of water resources should not be subject to internal market rules" was approved by a comfortable majority (removing the request to create a "European public service" for water) and explicit references to the opening-up of this sector to competition were rejected convincingly. The request to precede each new stage of liberalisation with impact studies on the social, environmental and employment consequences was rejected by about twenty votes, whereas a much tougher amendment, which talks of the economic gap caused by the request to postpone liberalisation of electricity and rail and which casts doubt on the opportunity of pursuing it, was adopted (by a majority of six votes). The request to postpone the approval of any new provisions (notable the draft general directive on services) until the debate on SGIs is concluded was only rejected by about ten votes (192 in favour, 201 against), whereas a few more MEPs rejected the recommendation of preceding any new initiative in favour of market opening with a consultation of the social partners, the local and regional authorities, consumer organisations and NGOs (maybe if the NGOs were left out, the recommendation would seem "passé"?).
Three conclusions. In my view, the EP's vote proved that: a) on this dossier, the Parliament is split into two virtually equal sides; b) some aspects have still not been clearly announced to the world, and understood, and cause hesitation, even within the same group (that of the EPP, in particular); c) the result of the forthcoming European elections may have a major influence on the Union's future choices (but who will explain to the voters what's really at stake?).
(F.R.)