Strasbourg, 15/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - At the end of a joint meeting on Wednesday afternoon between the PES and EPP-ED groups, German Social Democrat Evelyne Gebhardt declared to EUROPE that “the compromise is holding firm” on the draft directive on services in the internal market and for which she is the rapporteur. On the eve of the vote in first reading, the positions of the political groups were being finely tuned. There are minority fringes within the main political groups, composed of MEPs from the new Member States, whereas the EP needs a comfortable majority to carry its weight in negotiations. Gebhardt said that they would not have 600 votes in favour of the compromise but she did hope to get a “large majority” that covered the whole parliament. On Wednesday, a majority of around 400 votes appeared reasonable on the key points, according to some sources of consensus. In keeping with codecision procedure, the vote in the plenary reading will be by simple majority (see other article).
The EPP-ED group met on Tuesday evening to decide on its position on the case but did not vote. Most of its members accept the compromise on the principle of free provision of services developed by their group and the PES (EUROPE 9127 and 9129). However, they do prefer the amendment submitted by British Conservative Malcolm Harbour and Belgian Marianne Thyssen. This amendment differs from the initial compromise as it gets rid of consumer protection as Member States will be able to go to the Court of Justice to restrict cross-border provision of services (EUROPE 9129). Among these reasons, social policy is replaced by social security. On Tuesday Mr Pöttering appealed to his troops to support the compromise, which is certainly not ideal but is better than nothing, confided a spokesperson for the group. Several MEPs from the new Member States complained that the interests of their countries had not been respected or represented. Among the most liberal, Spanish, German and French described the compromise as going too far. Other delegates from Nordic countries regretted the exclusion of private health services, such as dieticians.
The PES group meeting achieved a “crushing majority” supporting the compromise even if they did not have a vote, according to the group spokesperson. He added, “with the exception of the French”, which was not totally against but which had made some criticism. Most in the PES group are expected to support the Harbour/Thyssen amendment, mainly because consumer protection will be better protected elsewhere by guaranteeing primacy of the sectoral directives. French socialist Bernard Poignant explained on Wednesday that this delegation would firstly vote for rejection of the directive, to mark its disagreement with the philosophy of the initial legislative proposal but it would, however, approve the directive if the services of general interest (SGI) and general economic interest (SGEI) were excluded, if the compromise on free movement of services mentioned social policy and if the provisions on the detachment of workers were withdrawn. On Tuesday the president of the group Martin Schultz made an ironic reference to the 31 French Socialists in his group, “in a large family, there are always different children, some are obedient and others insolent. The French children have got me really worried!”
The ALDE group indicated on Tuesday that its president Graham Watson was ready to support a compromise but not at any price. He regarded the PES/EPP-ED compromise on the principle of free movement of services as being equivalent to the “country of origin principle” and “cannot obtain the support of the majority in the PES/EPP-ED groups”. The ALDE group has “requested a separate vote on obtaining the suppression” of the compromise paragraph that lists reasons why Member States could maintain obstacles to free movement of services. Watson said that he was optimistic about getting a majority on this point.
The Greens/EFA confirmed on Tuesday that it would submit an amendment rejecting the directive as well as amendments that differentiated between access to services activities and exercise of this activity, amendments supported by rapporteur Gebhardt during the committee vote. Belgian Pierre Jonckeer declared “we support an internal services market with common European rules”, which says yes to free movement of services via harmonisation of European wide rules. He also added that they wanted a legislative proposal on SGI because they needed to get public services derogations to competition rights. On the same day co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit declared, “we consider that the 'common amendments” of the PES/EPP-ED was an advance on the report adopted in committee but they still considered that they did not go far enough. Despite all that, Cohn-Bendit said that they would vote for everything that improved the directive.
On Wednesday Francis Wurtz, president of the GUE/NGL group affirmed that the directive as it stood was less not more and pointed out that in his groups there was an “extremely wide consensus for rejecting the directive. According to Wurtz, the legal haze of the compromise of the two groups would confer excessive power to the Court of Justice, which habitually came down on the side of the country of origin principle, without using the term.