Madam President, Commissioner, we welcome with relief, even if it is only a stay of execution, the Commission’s decision to allow the Alstom rescue plan to take its chances. Let us not deceive ourselves: behind all the good reasons put forward by one side or the other, this issue will be a political test of the first order for the European Union as far as public opinion is concerned. This issue, which concerns one of the jewels in the crown of industrial and technological Europe, on which hangs the future of 118 000 employees throughout the world, is a practical test of both the European project and the Commission. Commissioner, we do not underestimate the extent to which the French Government, forced into a corner, making its clumsiness and its attempts to lay down the law even worse, has presented us with a fait accompli by publishing a rescue plan before negotiating with the Commission, as it is obliged to do under the Treaties. However, Mr Mer must be aware that in the past, on the basis of the same Treaties, another French Government, that of Mr Fabius, succeeded, without any difficulty and without any vain polemics from Brussels, in saving the French steel industry in circumstances which were difficult in other ways. Believe me, we are the first to suffer, we the elected representatives of France, when we see the Prime Minister of our country prostrating himself here in order to ask you to accept record deficits, and, at the same time, the reduction of VAT for his voters in the restaurant trade. It is true to say that in this behaviour, on the part of a country like France towards the European Union, there is something similar to, and as unilateral and arrogant as, the behaviour of Mr Bush towards the United Nations. Unfortunately, however, he needs a diversion and a scapegoat. He needs the old trick of treating himself to false victories when faced with the bureaucracy of Brussels. For all that, Commissioner, this episode, which can only be the herald of others like it, given the worrying movements towards deindustrialisation and delocalisation which are affecting the brightest jewels in our industrial crown, should make us, as Europeans, ask ourselves about the place and the status of our policy on competition within the Union. It is becoming increasingly outrageous and intolerable that our competition policy, in a context that is quite different from that of the Treaties by which it was established in 1986 and 1992, should remain bound by the impassable horizon of being simply a policy of the European Union. Many voices – too many, and increasingly credible – are being raised to claim that Europe cares more about the inexorable law of the market than any of the most free-market countries in the world, starting with the United States of America. Today, faced with the inexorable affirmation of the new major powers of tomorrow, Europe needs to look at things and judge them from an angle other than that of unbridled competition. It needs an industrial policy which is capable of protecting its national champions, of safeguarding its priceless technical heritage and its precious savoir-faire. It needs a social policy which aims to maintain living standards and the employment of the greatest possible number of Europeans. What is at stake here is, first and foremost, a social issue of primary importance, but also the competitiveness of Europe in the world at large. Finally, how can we make our peoples understand that an administrative authority over which there is no parliamentary control should alone take a decision of such importance that thousands of workers’ families are now awaiting it with bated breath and with anguish in their hearts? Above and beyond the decision that you take – and I cannot imagine that it will be a second negative – the whole meaning of the European project and the structure of the current Treaties are being called into question here. In this respect, we can only hope, if such a thing is possible, that the next Intergovernmental Conference will tackle this need to push forward, side by side and on equal terms with competition policy, a social policy of employment and an industrial policy which will enable the Union to defend its economic and social interests in the global world in which we shall be living from now on.

Political group: PSE