Madam President, chance occasionally organises things rather well. We are debating these broad economic policy guidelines when, barely 48 hours ago, the French state was paralysed by a general strike and when huge demonstrations against government projects to reform the retirement pensions system brought together more than two million men and women from every town in France. Has Mr Raffarin misinterpreted these broad guidelines that, overall, echo those of previous years? No, Mr Raffarin is a faithful disciple of the Commission. He forces himself to administer one of the potions, namely the sixteenth, recommended by the good doctors of Brussels. ‘In particular, Member States should over the coming three years design, introduce and effectively implement reforms of pension systems, encourage longer working lives by modifying incentives that encourage early withdrawal from the labour market and by restricting access to early retirement schemes, increase funding and improve, where necessary, access to supplementary pension schemes’. Potion number 3 is also in danger of failing to promote social cohesion, which is however one of the objectives adopted in Lisbon. It concerns salaries. The Member States must ‘ensure that nominal wage increases are consistent with price stability and productivity gains. In particular, wage developments should remain moderate.’ Along the same lines, the measures providing for greater ‘flexibility’ in the labour market might be cited. Potion number 6: review labour market regulations. Potion number 7: facilitate labour mobility, both geographical and occupational. It is true that the Margallo report introduces a few touches of humanity into these economic remedies reminiscent of Molière’s Doctor Diafoirus, but he does not fundamentally alter the ultra-liberal philosophy underlying them. They are about erasing the social advances that, more often than not, are the result of workers’ struggles. Under the guise of promoting competition and increasing productivity, the process is under way of creating a society in which everyone is engaged in open warfare against everyone else. We are a long way from the model of the social market economy that might represent a European ideal, humanely reconciling the necessity for private initiative with the need for a social guarantee that each and every person’s basic needs will be met. It is symptomatic that these prescriptions demand sacrifices from employees alone. There is no mention of those possessors of capital who have accumulated, and are accumulating, considerable profits, in particular by practising unfair dismissal and by dissolving companies. In conclusion, allow me to quote an extract from an editorial in the Basque newspaper, Egunkaria, which was arbitrarily banned a few weeks ago. I quote, in translation: ‘Today, we are no longer in the age of Aristotle, who justified slavery by observing that ships did not sail unaided. Nowadays, when ships do in fact sail more or less unaided, economic policies should not seek growth at any price. They should seek quality, not quantity.’ That is not, unfortunately, the perspective from which these guidelines have been written, and that is why I shall not be able to vote in favour of this report.

Political group: Verts-ALE