Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we have all set ourselves the ambitious target of turning Europe into the most modern and most attractive economic region in the world for enterprises and workers. As is so often the case, there is conflict not about the target, but about how to achieve this target. Some people believe that this target will be achieved through completely free entrepreneurial activity: others through controlling and regulating turbo capitalism. Of course, the truth lies in coming up with an intelligent combination of the two approaches. To make our economic area the most attractive in the world, our economy needs to be highly efficient. At the same time it needs to be human driven and take the form of a social market economy. Mr Bullmann has given us a lot of definitions of important structural indicators, which are intended to give us pointers for the correct approach to take. This in fact gives rise to the problem of increased burdens on medium-sized enterprises. That is why we support the proposal made by the Group of the Europe Liberal, Democratic and Reform Party that new statistics must not mean that medium-sized enterprises will have to shoulder a greater burden; existing material must be resorted to. Too much knowledge leads to all too frequent interventions, and this could blacken the prospects for the economy. The problem for the future consists in doing the right thing with the data and new facts at our disposal. It is therefore about fostering competition between systems, and private involvement. At the same time we also need rules to make sure that our systems are competitive. A look at my country is enough to show what should not be done: the extension of codecision in Germany. In my country it is argued that, because of the dynamics of the economy, more works councils should be set up which, for practical purposes, means for all medium-sized enterprises. Just imagine it if you can: new works councils are to be set up not only for large enterprises, but also for medium-sized enterprises. Now, that is nonsense. Not even the Bullmann report would argue to that effect, and rightly so. There is everything in there, from the development of research to pension regulations, but thankfully he does not say anything about extending codecision. By sticking with this concept, the red-green coalition in Germany is treading a misguided path, which is neither covered nor called for by European analyses. So, on this point, Germany, the biggest country in Europe, is showing itself to be incapable of meeting the new challenges as the most attractive economic area in the world. No, the red-green coalition is doing this aspect of the European challenge a real disservice. The token gesture that has been made to the trades unions in Germany because their influence is decreasing, is a poisoned chalice. Many in our group fear that the report before us contains too much detailed knowledge and detailed analyses. We must take this problem into consideration. The basic message that the European globalised world and the Europeans in this globalised world must take with them is that, above all, our economy must remain competitive and must not be restricted by this report. However, what we also need – which is missing in the report – is the next phase of the analysis. We need more global rules for global competition.

Political group: PPE-DE