Madam President, Commissioner, at our initiative, the Alstom trades union representatives have visited the European Parliament on several occasions. As long ago as 1999, they condemned serious management errors committed by the group’s directors. On 17 February 2000, here in Parliament, we adopted a resolution expressing a warning about the future risks facing the business. At the time, certain people stood up to speak and, in the name of the sacrosanct principles of liberalism, condemned this as an incongruous and, inevitably, incompetent intrusion of politics into economics – an experience that should give us all pause for serious thought. The coordinator of the Alstom Europe unions, Mrs Francine Blanche, was telling me yesterday evening that the employees were naturally pleased about the Commission’s approval, in principle, of the rescue plan. However, they remember the many warnings given by their elected representatives, warnings that have never been taken seriously at any level. They are not about to agree to be the victims of this rescue now. Mrs Blanche gave me to understand that, since his appointment in January of this year, the new chairman of the group, Mr Kron, had devoted no more than two hours to discussions with the European representatives of the employees. Such arrogance is no longer tolerable. The need is enormous, and the demands are loud for those employees to exercise their rights as employees. Already, Commissioner, Alstom’s European trades union coordinators are asking to be received, heard and listened to by the Commission. In the meantime, they will have studied the plan in detail and will be in a position to propose measures to achieve savings which will not take the form of job losses. That is what will happen in the immediate future. After that, this enormously important affair places certain major questions squarely on the agenda of the debate on the future of the European Union. I shall mention three of these. The first of these issues is the social dialogue, or rather the essential new rights of employees. Those timid and dust-covered directives on informing and consulting workers and on the European Works Council must be revised. Real rights must be established, even the right to suspend a restructuring plan so as to enable a second expert opinion to be obtained and all the available options considered. The second issue is that European industrial policy does not exist. All that exists is a race for state aids in the name of the competition rules. Yet in the present case, conversely, if there had not been any state aids, world economic competition would have been seriously distorted, given, on the one hand, what would be left of European industries in the strategic sectors of energy and the railways and, on the other, American giants such as General Electric, or those of Japan such as Mitsubishi. Thirdly, the democratic functioning of the Union makes it necessary to review the discretionary powers granted to the Commission in competition matters. It is essential that the social partners, the national parliaments and, of course, Parliament should have their say as regards the criteria to be met, the objectives to be assigned, and the controls to be exercised. Where would have been the legitimacy, in the minds of our fellow citizens, in implementing the Commission’s initial threat to refuse the rescue plan for a strategic business which employs 118 000 people? Finally, the Alstom case is a powerful reminder of the essential political choices to which the public debate on the European constitution will be leading us. For all these reasons, it was well worth adding this item to our agenda.

Political group: GUE-NGL