MALTA – EU MEMBERSHIP: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES AHEAD
OFFERING A BETTER SERVICE TO CITIZENS
Mr Luca JAHIER
President of Group III 'Various Interests'
of the
European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)
Inaugural Speech
St. Julian's - MALTA
23 March 2017
MORNING
MALTA – EU MEMBERSHIP: ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES AHEAD
(Language regime: DE. EN. FR. MT. / EN. FR. MT.)
Dear Prime Minister
Dear Maltese friends and colleagues
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is with great pleasure that we, Members of the Various Interests Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, are here with you today in Malta hosted by the Maltese Presidency that I wish to thank warmly.
"Bringing the Union closer together for the common good of citizens of Europe" – "Bringing the European process closer to the individual citizen and make it more comprehensible"[1] are among the most recurrent wows, on which Malta based its action during the Presidency.
Malta's Presidency falls in fact right in the middle of a period charged with challenges to be faced: starting the Brexit negotiations, the way forward from the Bratislava Declaration and Roadmap, the reactions to the European Commission's White Paper on the Future of Europe and the outcomes of the March celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties that will be held in a couple of days from now.
On the top of this, Malta also chose to focus on six priorities (immigration, single market, security, social inclusion, European neighborhood and maritime sector) some of which have particular implications.
Providing an appropriate response to immigration, for instance, relies on solidarity which "is not an à la carte option that we use when we need it, and turn a blind eye to when others need it. Solidarity is an essential European value, at the very core of what the founding mothers and fathers envisaged sixty years ago in Rome" as stated by Prime Minister Muscat in his address to the European Parliament in January. The same applies to security, "if we are not together we are vulnerable".
Throughout all this process there are some major preoccupations: "we need the EU to serve better their (the citizens – ndr) needs (…)"; "we need to improve the communication with each other (…), but most importantly with our citizens. (…) Focus on citizens' expectations, with strong courage to challenge simplistic solutions of extreme or populist political forces"; we "need to be clear about what the EU can do, and what is for the Member States to do, to make sure we can deliver on our promises"[2].
These are also the concepts that inspired us while building-up the programme of our meeting. Today we want to hear from the Maltese civil society what Europe brought to citizens (since its accession on 1 May 2004), what it means for citizens – understood here as consumers, goods and service providers, workers as well as persons actively engaged in the promotion and defence of good causes (fight against poverty, equal opportunities, disabilities, environment protection are just a few examples of the wide range of interests represented here amongst speakers and participants).
But we would also like to hear how Europe can meet the challenge of getting closer to its citizens. As you will discover this morning, Malta has a very well developed and structured way of involving civil society in national and European decision making process.
Malta Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD) and Malta-EU Steering & Action Committee (MEUSAC), as their respective Presidents will show us, have this precise function, namely to advice the Maltese government on matters of economic and social relevance as well as to engage proactively civil society in the EU-decision making process and to assist local councils and civil society organisations to secure EU funds.
We will also see that inside and around them CSO are active, they voice citizens' concerns and are eager to find the way to make sure that ideas and dialogue can go through with the aim of striking the right balance.
Yes, striking the right balance is nowadays more than ever a challenge and Europe seems to have lost its sense of direction: how to conceal environmental and public health concerns for example, with the need of removing trade barriers at international level but also within our Single Market?
We will hear more in detail on this in the afternoon session, which is why I took this example.
I picked-up this example also to show how much the EU can be close to our day-to-day lives. Nowadays pro-Europe leaders, national and European, never miss the opportunity to remind us the achievements linked to the European integration (peace, free movement, single currency…).
But, at the same time they are fully aware that the EU is sometimes considered either too distant or too interfering in the citizens' lives – the recently issued White Paper on the Future of Europe is very clear on this point as well as on others: some citizens question the EU's added-value in improving their standards of living, its shortfalls in meeting their expectations "as it struggled with its worst financial, economic and social crisis in post-war history".
The White Paper moves exactly from this awareness: "citizens' trust in the EU has decreased in line with that for national authorities. Around a third of citizens trust the EU today, when about half of Europeans did so ten years ago. Closing the gap between promise and delivery is a continuous challenge". And it is not by chance that each of the five scenarios for Europe by 2025 presented in the White Paper is "evaluated" in terms of its capacity to close this gap.
Within this framework it is therefore essential to better explain to citizens what Europe concretely does and at the same time show them that Europe is also able to decide over wider issues such as migrations, the future of the EMU, Social Europe, Circular Economy, Energy Union, Sustainable Development Agenda.
CSO play a major role in this process as they help public authorities focusing on the "real" expectations while being aware of the difficulties linked to their achievement, first of all because they are often the result of a quest for "the right balance" between sometimes opposite concerns. The EESC and Group III are there to help this process.
Recently the European Parliament adopted two important reports, namely "Possible evolutions of and adjustments to the current institutional set-up of the European Union" and "Improving the functioning of the European Union building on the potential of the Lisbon Treaty", to which the EESC contributed actively and successfully with an opinion in September 2015 already (of which I was Rapporteur with a Spanish member of Group I).
No later than last week President Juncker expressed in writing to our President its appreciation for "the value and remarkable quality of your opinions, which are always intelligent and instructive" – but this is not our unique function.
Both European Parliament's documents refer to the EESC as a body whose opinions increase "the democratic legitimacy of policy-shaping and legislative processes" and invite the Parliament, the Council and the Commission to improve cooperation with the Committee, "including at the pre-legislative stage during the conduct of impact assessments, in order to ensure that their opinions and assessments can be taken into account throughout the legislative process".
The EESC responded to this call performing, already in the past year, a series of impact assessments evaluating the perception and experience of EU CSO on the implementation of EU laws and programmes (e.g. consumers directive, Horizon 2020, Erasmus +). Study visits on the field were also carried out to respond to consultations on the migration crisis, for example, or on the Social Pillar.
Civil participation is therefore called upon, CSO are actively responding, and it is embodied as a key complementary component to representative democracy in art.11 of the TEU.
Crucially, participatory democracy could already be attained within the existing Treaties, a great deal could be achieved by developing EU policies, improving processes and full implementation. The political will is there, however there has been limited progress in implementing art.11 effectively and giving full substance to the concept of participatory democracy.
So, going back to the concerns mentioned in the beginning – EU to serve better their citizens – I would like to conclude referring to a statement of Mr Van Rompuy, former President of the European Council, dated June 2015 on the theme "Is there a need for a New Pact for Europe?"
Mr Van Rumpuy considered that today the EU needs to strive for the right balance between an "enabling" Europe, capable of opening new opportunities and a "caring" Europe able to support its citizens.
I firmly believe that it is precisely this synergy, reinforced by a new participatory dimension, that will encourage European citizens and by consequence politicians, to regain confidence in the European project, in the spirit of the Preamble of the Treaty on the European Union.
Two eminent representatives of the Maltese Institutions make us the honor to be present today, Hon. Joseph MUSCAT – Prime Minister of Malta and Hon. Ian BORG – Parliamentary Secretary for the EU Presidency 2017. This is a the demonstration of the real interest that Maltese public authorities have in listening to civil society, I am very grateful to them. Thank you!
I wish you all a fruitful and inspiring debate and I look forward to listening to the exchanges.
I now give the floor to Mr Ben Rizzo, member of Group III and President of the Civil Society Committee of the MCESD. Ben, being the only Maltese member of our Group worked particularly hard for the organization of this meeting. We thank him very much for this!
AFTERNOON
OFFERING A BETTER SERVICE TO CITIZENS
(Language regime: DE. EN. FR. MT. / EN. FR. MT.)
Dear colleagues,
This morning we debated wide issues such as participatory democracy, the role of CSO in the decision making process, the support that can be offered by public authorities, focusing on the Maltese experience, that inspired us greatly.
This afternoon we will focus on a more specific theme, relating to the day to day life of citizens: offering a better service to citizens, the encounter between demand and offer, striving the wright balance between consumers/clients' protection, profitable production/service provision, free competition and movement of goods and services in the EU.
As one can see we involved a number of stakeholders at EU and national level to have a complete overview of the different issues such as business and professional ethics, the responsibilities and guarantees requirements linked to high-quality knowledge based services of liberal professions, affordable access for consumers to safe goods and services, the resolutions of disputes linked to cross-border product and services delivery.
Just a few data:
· 10 - 15 % of EU GDP (€14,600 billion in 2014) is generated by the service providers in trusted areas as medicine, law, taxes, IT
· SMEs represent 99.8 % of the total number of enterprises in Europe. 9 out of 10 EU SMEs are micros
· SMEs employ 2 out of every 3 employees and produce 57 cents of every euro of value added[3]
· There are 508 million consumers in the EU
· Over 62% of EU countries’ total trade is done with other EU countries. The annual value of total exports of goods for EU-28 Member States to other Member States is over 3 063 billion (2015)
Services providers are entrepreneurs, employers and employees at the same time and they all bear a special responsibility for health, access to law, construction security, etc. The same can be said of other services and good providers – the relation between them and consumers/clients therefore relies on mutual and personal trust, transparency becomes essential.
Legislation setting the base for this mutual trust must therefore take into consideration a number of expectations from the different actors involved: it must be applicable by a majority of SMEs, it must respect the quality requirements and guarantees established by self-regulated professional bodies, it must protect end-users' rights.
Group III, given is diverse composition, including amongst other SMEs, liberal professions and consumers is particularly sensitive and well placed to deal with these challenges: it helps bridging the requirements linked to the realisation of an efficient and competitive single market with those of the individuals who have to deliver, produce and consume goods and services in the single market.
This afternoon we will hear about interesting examples of steps taken in that direction, such as the establishment of an ethical code for liberal professions, the cooperation between consumers and SMEs to go towards efficient self and co-regulation and alternative dispute resolutions.
A constant work of dialogue amongst CSO, within the same sector and between different ones, is supported and encouraged by Group III and the EESC, seeking final positions of compromise between sometimes quite opposite positions.
It is exactly this kind of exercise that will lead us, hopefully, to strive the wright balance, while focusing on citizens' expectations, with the aim of making sure that the EU can deliver its promises.
I wish you all a fruitful and inspiring debate and I look forward to listening to the exchanges.
[1] Intro Ian Borg to the EESC priorities during the Maltese presidency – January 2017
[2] The Bratislava Declaration and Roadmap – September 2016
[3] Value added = net contribution of the company to the economy