Brussels, 08/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - On 9 December, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left Group of the European Parliament published a letter, in several major European newspapers, calling upon the social stakeholders to "use all of their weight" and reject the proposed "services" directive. "We are at a new stage in our battle", the president of the group, Francis Wurtz, told a small group of journalists. He added that with the vote of 22 November at the committee on the internal market (EUROPE 9074), the EP was running the risk of adopting an "extremely bad" directive, which runs "absolutely counter to public opinion in several of the Member States". He went on to plead: we would like to say to all of our social partners that we need them to make this mobilisation "something quite exemplary", and to avoid the current extremely strong slide "towards a conception of European integration via the market" rather than by politics and dialogue. The GUE/NGL group has already called for the vote in plenary, which is earmarked for 17 January 2006, to be postponed "by at least a month". The decision will be taken next week by the Conference of the Presidents, but Mr Wurtz is concerned "that a small majority may refuse to postpone it".