Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, over the last few months, a growing number of sudden decisions has been taken to make mass redundancies or to close down companies’ sites. These decisions are usually taken without any consideration of alternative solutions for safeguarding jobs, and are sometimes taken by businesses making large profits, such as Danone, or they may even come about as a result of mergers, which have just been authorised by the Commission, as in the case of ABB Alstom Power. In several cases, employees learnt that they were to be made redundant on the radio, their representatives were only informed of the decision a few minutes before it was officially announced, and, in the case of Marks [amp] Spencer, the decision was announced ten minutes before the opening of the Stock Exchange. I would like to welcome the Marks [amp] Spencer employees’ representatives, who are seated in the public gallery. These events, like those which happened at Renault-Vilvoorde, have again highlighted the shortcomings of Community legislation, when it exists, and the urgent need to adopt, at long last, a general framework to guarantee workers’ rights to information, consultation and collective negotiation, in order to safeguard their rights and to enable solutions to be found, other than those that put their jobs and future at risk. Employees faced with these decisions must be able to count upon the European Union, on its legislation and on its institutions. The European Union cannot remain a framework within which the only restrictive rules are those of the internal market, competition and budgetary discipline, whilst social rules remain woolly, can be avoided and have no facility for imposing penalties if the rules are breached. I shall let Mrs Ghilardotti speak about the general framework on behalf of my group, and I shall focus on the two other aspects, which are the revision of the 1994 Directive on a European Work Council and procedures for mergers and acquisitions. The definitions of information and consultation given in the Directive on works councils are so vague that they provide no guarantee. To define consultation as ‘the exchange of views and establishment of dialogue’ is far too imprecise. We therefore need another guarantee to ensure that consultation does indeed take place at the right time, in other words, before decisions are taken, during the working-out phase, to ensure that the works council may give an opinion, propose other solutions, and that negotiation can be based not only on the management’s plan, but also on counter-proposals from workers’ representatives. I believe that we must at last ensure the possibility of referral to a competent public authority on a national level, as already laid down in the 1998 directive on collective redundancies and, if required, on a European level, particularly in companies with a Europe-wide presence so that, if the procedure of information and prior consultation is disregarded, or if the decisions are blatantly unfounded and other solutions could be considered both on a social and an employment level, the competent public authority can declare the redundancy plan null and void. The 1994 Directive must therefore be revised – I share your view, Commissioner – otherwise this text, which was pioneering when it was adopted, will end up being obsolete in the light of the new drafts adopted by Council, on the European limited company, or by Parliament in 1999, at first reading, on the Directive on a general framework for informing and consulting employees. Genuine consultation obviously requires information to be readily available to workers’ representatives and to be of practical value, such as the opportunity to hold meetings, to have access to experts, or to request support from unions. My second and final point relates to mergers. I do believe that we should really be able to take the dimension of employment into account, and that is possible without amending the Treaties, simply by adapting legislation, because the Treaties already set the Commission the task of monitoring the effects of these decisions on employment. I therefore believe that the proposed questionnaire is essential but also that workers’ representatives must be able to refer to the Commission if, in their view, the merger plan is putting jobs or industrial plants at risk. I also believe that it is not only the Commissioner for Competition, but also the Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs who must, if necessary, be able to question the conditions specified if they do not provide adequate guarantees for job security.

Political group: PSE