Mr President, when the European Council convenes at Seville, two years and a few months, or four presidential terms, will have passed since the Lisbon Summit and its ambitious decisions to make the Union the world’s most competitive economic area by the year 2010. It would be wrong and disparaging to say that nothing has been done. Bringing modern IT skills within the scope of lifelong learning, which is Commissioner Liikanen’s department, has, for example, already made progress in many countries. However, in these two years, one of which has been overshadowed by the recession in the United States of America, we have only lagged behind the United States. GNP there has grown faster and unemployment is less than 6%, while it is more like in excess of 10% in the Union. Not nearly enough has happened, therefore. Without going over all the sectors one by one, privatisation, the genuine opening up of markets, and the removal of barriers to restructuring in industry and services have still not come about. The job market remains structurally rigid, keeping the unemployed at bay and protecting those with jobs. The reasons for this inactivity are to be found in the Union’s nation states which the Commission has not managed to enjoin or tempt to embrace economic reforms. Short-term real, but also often imagined, interests have come before the common interest. There are always elections going on in some country, and reforms become paralysed for the space of a year. The inflexible nature of the labour market, the maintenance of industrial structures in a way that hinders competition, and the non-existent policy the countries of the Union have on immigration and asylum have led to the sort of dissatisfaction that is now breaking out and which has broken out in recent elections in the form of protests by both the young and the old in Europe unable to find work. In connection with this too is the feeling many foreigners legally resident in many countries in the Union have that they are being discriminated against. I no longer intend to blame the governments that have been edged aside. I am also addressing my plea and warning to the centre-right governments that have come to power via the Commission and the Council. Unless you have the courage to make reforms you can forget the grand words of Lisbon and the future picture of a Europe as the world’s most competitive area! Sometimes I really miss Margaret Thatcher, the fruits of whose policies Tony Blair still enjoys. Economical, clean energy is one basic requirement for the economic growth of sustainable development. It is a pleasure for me to praise the political decision-makers in my own country, Finland, for their courage in keeping nuclear energy clearly alongside other forms of development in electrical energy. The decision was that of a small country but was just the sort of courageous start that was needed, although the cacophony that opposes this and wants to put the brakes on progress is loud. The country to hold the Presidency, Spain, is to be congratulated now on giving the shaping of a common asylum and immigration policy a key position at Seville. It is necessary, because a Europe whose population is ageing should not be turning away immigrants but integrating them in a controlled way as new Europeans.

Political group: PPE-DE