Mr President, Prime Minister Katainen, you spoke rightly of fair, pragmatic and value-driven integration in these times of financial crisis. While populists in different countries repeat their EU one-liners, we in the European People’s Party have been focusing on steering Europe’s economy towards growth and coming up with serious solutions to serious problems. As was said by Chairman Daul at last week’s EPP Bureau Meeting in Croatia, our logic has been to focus on the economy in order to be able to create social policy; to focus on growth in order to be able to create jobs.
I shall continue in Finnish.
On aivan luonnollista, että jokainen jäsenvaltio haluaa rahansa takaisin. Tiedämme kuitenkin, ettei se ole loogisesti mahdollista: jos kaikki saavat saman verran takaisin, eihän rahoja kannattaisi lainkaan kierrättää Brysselin kautta. Mutta eräässä mielessä me kaikki haluamme rahamme takaisin, me haluamme sen vahvuutena, yhteistyön voimana, lisäarvona siten, että yhdessä olemme enemmän kuin yksin. Mutta se ei onnistu, ellemme kunnioita unionin perusarvoja, ja näin minä ymmärsin Jyrki Kataisen viestin.
Deepening the internal market is not a particularly sexy topic, but it is the area of integration that is the most likely to show inside the wallets of European citizens. The field with possibly the greatest potential for growth and job creation is our common digital market, of which Finland has been a great champion. I would like to pay my compliments to our government for this. Europe-wide much has been done, but the pace of digital market integration has not been as fast as desired. All the institutions – but especially the Member States – are responsible for this.
I am currently our group’s shadow rapporteur on the proposed directive on collective management of copyright, and after numerous discussions with stakeholders, I would like to raise a couple of concerns. The creative industries play a great role in the creation of growth and jobs, and therefore, we should promote the position and role of content providers, i.e. musicians, song-writers, composers, etc. It is particularly important for the advancement of the internal market that the conditions of the European content providers are taken care of. A clear risk is the loss of European competitiveness, linguistic and cultural diversity.
Having said this, I am very grateful for the work of Minister Alexander Stubb in the promotion of the Finnish music industry, and also to President Barroso’s cabinet.
