Mr President, the directive sets out to identify and prevent subsidies that distort competition. To this end, it proposes to require public undertakings, and private undertakings that perform public tasks, to carry out separate accounting procedures, recording separately the reserved and the competitive spheres of the business. The legal basis for the directive is Article 86(3), and the Commission is therefore authorised to issue the directive itself. In fact this is now out of step with the spirit of the time, and with what we understand by European legislation, and must be changed. But today’s debate is to be welcomed with open arms because it exemplifies the new form of transparency in the Commission’s legislative work in areas where it has supervisory powers, and also bears witness to the interest Commissioner Monti and his offices take in the opinion of the European Parliament. The businesses which the directive covers have special or exclusive rights or provide services of general economic interest. As such, the possibility exists that cross-subsidies are provided, and also that complaints about cross-subsidies will ensue. Thousands of businesses will be affected. It seems debatable as to whether they will actually consider the burden the directive imposes to be commensurate with its aims. The majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has wholeheartedly endorsed this measure because there is a need for more transparency within the internal market. The whole committee would agree with this, even if the rapporteur represented the minority view in some areas. It is doubtful as to whether the measure really seems suited to following up suspicions concerning competition-distorting subsidies, particularly as it fails to provide any harmonised internal accounting procedures at European level. I am formulating these doubts so as to afford the Commission the opportunity to dispel some of them in a concrete and constructive manner at the revision stage. I have already mentioned that the Commission is expecting complaints about cross-subsidies, and has actually already dealt with complaints in the past. However, it has also been apparent in the past that the Commission has always made provision for sector-specific regulations, which cover a variety of regulatory areas. Unfortunately, it did not continue down this path. Of course, one could say that it would be easier if we now had a uniform regulation for the remaining areas, and indeed that was the view taken by the majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. However, I also believe that any directive should be assessed according to its efficiency, careful targeting, precision and subtlety, so as to enable the Commission to carry out its supervisory function to optimum effect. There was a further problem with the discussions on this directive in that the Commission failed to emphasise that, under Article 295 of the EC Treaty, it is entirely the Member States’ responsibility to determine what services are of general economic interest and how they should be provided. I ask myself whether the Commission’s ulterior motive, in failing to emphasise this in the transparency directive, is to tamper with this sovereign definition by slow degrees, thereby undermining the principle of subsidiarity. It is for the Member States to decide whether supplying television transmitters constitutes a public task and, as such, whether or not every single transmission is included. It is not appropriate for the EU to intervene here. In this respect, there should be another reference in the text of the directive to the Amsterdam Protocol, because this established that it is the responsibility of the Member States to establish the financial and organisational structures for public service broadcasting corporations and their different activities. Aid for fulfilment of public tasks is expressly permitted, and this was the position adopted by the majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. However, broadcasting corporations may not receive state aid where they operate outside their public remit. And so the Commission must, as a matter of principle, clarify that under no circumstances will it cast doubt on the meaning of ‘services of general economic interest’ per se. It must make it clear that the draft directive does not constitute a further attack on the system of public undertakings. Needless to say, the competition rules must be adhered to by all. Indeed it is important and right for the competition rules to be applied effectively and fairly and for cross-subsidies that go against the purpose of aid to be prevented. However, competition rules are not an end in themselves but the means to an end of undisrupted operation of a social market economy in the internal market.

Political group: PSE