Madam President, I should like to make three remarks. Firstly, the Commission’s new postal directive envisaged, in fact, the almost total liberalisation of postal services. By putting operators in competition with each other in the most profitable areas, it would lead to the closure of a large number of post offices, job losses and insecure jobs and would result in social dumping. We are given two reasons for the need for further liberalisation. Firstly, to continue the process of creating a large, liberalised European market while stating that liberalisation of this kind would create jobs. However, no one is deceived into believing that the Commission’s proposals are not part of an initiative to abolish the universal service. Secondly, reference is made to the 1997 Directive. However, if liberalisation had been such a great success, then why, in spite of the repeated requests by Parliament, has the Commission still not carried out a public critical assessment of the consequences of the first phase of the liberalisation of the sector in 1997, not only in terms of employment, but also in terms of postal rates and the number of post offices remaining throughout Europe? My second remark is this: as soon as it was known about, the planned new directive elicited a great many reactions. The fact is, across the range of very different approaches, the proposals made have been deemed inadmissible by a majority of players in the postal services field and also by a great many parliamentarians. Trade unionists, consumer associations and postal workers have expressed their views right here in Strasbourg. A European appeal has been launched by the MEPs in three of our parliamentary groups. What has been gauged is the considerable importance people attach to their local post offices. What lies behind this concept is what it represents as an integral component in social cohesion and harmonious urban and rural planning. Social cohesion is a frequently recurring theme here in Parliament. Like a good many others, it is a term requiring some practical expression. I believe, moreover, that it is this which has made it possible to curb the most retrograde provisions of the directive proposed by Commissioner Bolkestein. Indeed, the notion of special services is eliminated by the amendments of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and by taking account of the opinions of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. I am very pleased about that, because this notion of special services was in any case intended to exclude new technologies from the scope of universal service. The 50-gramme weight limit proposed for the reserved sector has been increased to 150 grammes, the rates have been increased from two and a half times to four times the standard tariff and the dates from which the new directive is to apply, like the date for transposition, have been put back. I also think it important that there is no longer any reference to a new time limit for liberalisation and that there is, in addition, a formal requirement for a genuine assessment. Finally, my third and last remark: although these initiatives are worth emphasising and represent serious resistance to the initial project, we ought not to deceive ourselves that we are not embarking upon a new phase in the liberalisation of the postal sector. That is something about which I, unlike other colleagues, was not happy. We therefore need to remain vigilant. We need to ensure that there are no harmful consequences for employment and for the post office network, or for postal rates, because we are told it is to be beneficial. However, Parliament also needs to work on determining what is required of a high quality universal service relevant to the demands of the new century within the European Union. Social and economic development is leading to an explosion in the need for information. Enabling everyone to access the various means by which information is transmitted is crucial to the economy and to society. It is not, however, possible to enable everyone to access these modes of transmission in the framework of unfettered competition. The modern economy, which was so dear to those at the Lisbon Summit, needs a modern universal service developing along lines quite different to those of the dogma of liberalisation. The fact that restraints have been placed on the initial project and yet, at the same time, the fact that a new phase of liberalisation is being embarked upon will lead me to abstain from voting on Mr Ferber’s report.

Political group: GUE-NGL