Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is clear that the purpose of the directive is to further liberalise the job market for the benefit of big business; at the same time, it strikes at the heart of the labour and vocational rights of the very few categories of workers who still have such rights. Within these frameworks, it aims to maximise the potential for companies to guarantee an abundance of skilled manpower, so that they can choose as much as they need, as and when they need it, so as to depress the price of manpower, trample the workers' rights and vested interests underfoot and, generally, enhance the exploitation of scientific manpower. At the same time, this is an indirect but clear intervention in the education systems of the Member States, despite the provision to the contrary in the Treaty of the European Union. The distinction between vocational and academic equivalence is the means of imposing an education model which limits the breadth and depth of higher education to the minimum demands of companies; in other words, it is far below the academically acceptable level. It is an education model which downgrades higher education as a whole and creates specialised scientific manpower with no depth of knowledge and hence no demands. As far as the content of the directive is concerned, we would point out that, on the pretext of simplifying recognition procedures, the minimum preconditions set for access to scientific professions safeguarded under the law are much lower than those which already apply in numerous countries in the European Union and in Greece. Every Member State is obliged to allow any foreign national or local to pursue their profession, provided they have a diploma accepted by another Member State for the pursuit of that profession, irrespective of the standard of the diploma. In other words, a mechanic who has graduated from a three-year course automatically acquires the same professional rights as a graduate from a five-year course at a Greek polytechnic. In addition, the directive puts all post-secondary education diplomas on the same footing, be they from a higher education institution or from a vocational school. Even vocational experience or practical exercise can, according to the directive, be equated to a three-year or five-year course. For Greece in particular, the directive intervenes indirectly and creates faits accomplis in order to bring to a close outstanding education issues on which there is acute confrontation and controversy on the part of the interested parties. Thus, for example, Articles 12 and 13 and certain amendments impose vocational equivalence between graduates of liberal studies centres which have signed contracts with foreign universities and graduates from Greek universities, even though these studies are not recognised as higher studies in Greece. In order to implement the foregoing and circumvent any possible obstacle at national level, the directive endeavours to regulate every possible case in detail and to preclude any possible derogation. It even introduces a single specialist committee to recognise vocational qualifications and control progress in the application of the operation. For these reasons, we are categorically opposed to the directive. We propose that academic equivalence should be the basic precondition for the recognition of vocational equivalence, which should be granted on the basis of the terms of the host country. Similarly, we call for all the laboratories or study centres which enter into agreements with foreign universities and market their diplomas to be closed and for the franchising system to be abolished entirely in the field of university education.

Political group: GUE-NGL