Debate is on. The Arcelor/Mittal Steel affair won't go away. Last week the French and Luxembourg authorities accused Mr Mittal of not having any industrial project or guarantee for protecting jobs and business units in Europe. This week the very same Mr Mittal submitted a strategic programme to the Belgian authorities, which certainly needs to be developed, but does in fact both seek to provide assurances and provide a number of goals. Prime Minister Guy Verrhofstadt has said that negotiations would continue and his objective was to obtain “a maximum of guarantees on jobs, production, investment, innovation and research in our country”. After which, Lakshmi Mittal declared to the press that he aimed to “create a European champion, uniting two complementary groups for whom we have identified numerous synergies”. In parallel, Luxembourg has prepared some legislation on hostile takeovers to allow managers to take defensive measures against a takeover, without necessarily going to the shareholders meeting. More theatrics are undoubtedly awaiting us, anything can happen. But what is essential is that with the emergency over, we avoid the more general issues being relegated to the shadows. On the contrary, the moment should be seized in order to have a genuine European debate and I was pleased to note that the president of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell announced such a debate at the EP in the next few weeks (see bulletin 9126).
Political answers are needed. The basic question is simple: is the EU on the right track for defining fair and exhaustive standards for corporate governance that are likely to tackle (and severely sanction) abuse and fraud, which in the recent past have had a particularly damaging impact on workers, savers and public finance, as well as the very image of a capitalism without rules? The general question can be subdivided into several specific questions on takeover regulation, standards on globalisation provisions: how to prevent a company getting round European norms and simply transferring its head office somewhere else or its business and capital? We aren't going to come up with the answers today. The EU has been dealing with these issues for a long time and a lot has been done: directives on corporate law, regulation (partial) of takeovers, the fight against tax havens etc. The Arcelor/Mittal affair now provides the opportunity for relaunching the debate at a political level.
A few years ago, this debate was restricted to the realm of the specialists and if it took on a more general character, the positions were rigidly determined by the different political orientations. At the European Parliament one only needed to verify the political loyalty of a speaker to know a priori the content of his speech (including the excesses). Of course a parliamentarian cannot and should not strip themselves of their political convictions in such sensitive an area. What should be banished is the baseless sloganeering, ignorance of the subject in question and obviously the untruths. At the European Parliament, the symbol of change occurred during the previous legislature when the president of “Confrontations Europe”, Philippe Herzog, who, due to his connections to the services directive, partially introduced a new debate on the controversial economic issues by focusing on the real situation and less on the ideological positions at the outset. It remains, however, obvious that public and contradictory public confrontation involving political differences are indispensable and that the EP's economic and monetary committee had already proceeded to a preliminary discussion at last week's meeting with the European Commissioner for competition Neelie Kroes. Everything would suggest that the European Parliament will not be in hiding and that the plenary debate will take place.
A new factor. As for public opinion being involved, I see the new factor as being the coming onto the scene of “successful authors” in the publishing market, figures who have guided sensational takeovers or who have been linked to different and significant affairs (I am not talking about Mr Tapi, who is a best seller for different reasons), and who have taken up a position, that is sometimes overtly polemic on what they have observed or learnt. Tomorrow I will be looking at other considerations and observations I find striking, as a prelude to the political debate.
(F.R.)