Brussels, 20/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - The internal market cannot be concluded without a legal framework for public services and the time for legal clarification has arrived. The European Commission must stop beating about the bush and flying in the face of reality. A European commissioner for public services is needed. These were the main conclusions of the first interinstitutional conference on 'A European framework for high quality public services' organised jointly in Brussels on Thursday 19 April by the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) in close cooperation with the Socialist Group at the European Parliament, European social partners and representatives of civil society and territorial organisations. CoR President Michel Delebarre and EESC President Dimitris Dimitriadis hoped the conference could continue to build on the impetus launched three years ago by the debate surrounding the White Paper on services of general interest, which has been growing in importance since the September 2006 vote at the EP.
The debate focussed on the need to establish a stable legal framework at EU level to guarantee the operating of public services in the EU and ensure high quality. As we explained in issue 9381, the European Commission is currently examining the idea of an interinstitutional framework based on 8 principles to guide its sector-based approach to services of general interest. Marcel Haag, speaking on behalf of the Commission on Thursday, said that the unveiling of the Commission report on the follow-up to its May 2004 White Paper on services of general interest - SGI - would depend on many issues, like the timing of the Commission's adoption of the revised single market package. The adoption of the report by the College of commissioners seems to have been postponed until after the French presidential and general elections and will not contain any new draft legislation but will take the form of statements, explained CoR President Michel Delebarre, who hoped that the debate on the future of the draft Constitutional Treaty would be centre stage this summer. Article III-122 of the draft Constitutional Treaty (foreseeing that principles will be set out in law to enable the completion of services of general economic interest - SGEI - missions) was agreed upon virtually unanimously by all the conference participants, added Delebarre, who called for it to be preserved and completed by the demand that the supplying of SGI, a vital component of the European social model, along with the principle that general service missions are more important than competition rules, would be made EU objectives and be included in any new draft version of the treaty.
'It is now politically and legally urgent to clarify the rules applied to services of general economic interest in Europe, to guarantee that they will not be submitted to the sole logic of the internal market and competition,' said Harlem Desir, Vice-President of the Socialist Group at the European Parliament. 'We ask the European Commission once more to stop launching largely non-committal, cosmetic and non-legislative initiatives in this respect,' he added. Bernhard Rapkay, German MEP and rapporteur for the White Paper on SGI, said the time for legal clarification had arrived, referring to Delebarre's comments on Article III-122 of the draft treaty and noting that while the Commission believed this was not an area for European law, he thought the opposite. EESC member and rapporteur on the White Paper on SGI, Raymond Hencks (Employers' Group, Luxembourg), called for the distinction between economic and non-economic to be dropped because of the way SGI varied from one country to the next and the problem of finding an exhaustive definition of SGI/SGEI. He said it was vital to establish positive EU law that would allow member states to exercise their powers in maximum legal certainty in order to ensure the fundamental values of universality, solidarity and access to high quality services of general interest.
The secretary general of ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation), John Monks, and the secretary general of CEEP (The Partner for Services of General Interest), Rainer Plassman, said 'high performance services of general interest are a key factor for sustainable growth in Europe, for more competitiveness in the European economy, for more and better employment, for greater social and territorial cohesion in an enlarged Europe, for addressing the demographic challenges and for improving the quality of the environment.' A press release from the Socialist Group at the EP noted that clear rules are needed for suppliers of high quality public services and their users. John Monks pointed out that ETUC had launched a petition in favour of high quality public services to push the Commission in the right direction (see EUROPE 9397), which he urged everyone to sign (http://www.etuc.org ). Carola Fischback-Pyttel, General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU), said 'We need to balance the effects of the EU Services Directive with an EU legal framework on public services, and we need the European Commission to stop creating ever more convoluted, some would say cynical, ways of avoiding this reality. After 10 years of debate this is the least we can expect.' Jean-Claude Boual of the European Liaison Committee on Services of General Interest (CELSIG) called for a European commissioner to be appointed with special responsibility for public services to work 'horizontally' (unlike DG Competition) to move the issue forward. Harlem Desir said public services were not an enemy of the European project and he didn't want them to be an orphan but rather to have their own commissioner. DG Competition is great for European business but not public services, he added. Roshan Di Puppo, Director of the Social Platform, told reporters that 'access to affordable and high quality services is a fundamental right as such, but also serves to implement other rights. As an example, the provision of care facilities for dependent relatives is intrinsically linked to the achievement of equality between women and men. To gain back citizens' trust in Europe, the EU needs to have the political courage to propose more than non-binding principles. It has to put forward a clear proposal that would ultimately impose a clear obligation on EU member states to ensure the democratic control of citizens and the respect of their fundamental rights to quality services of general interest.' Harlem Desir concluded: 'EU-wide initiatives to improve the legal certainty and quality of public services are necessary, thereby respecting democratic rules and putting an end to case-by-case decisions by the European Court of Justice.' (gb)