madam president may i start by congratulating the rapporteur on his report not just for what he said but also for the length of the report or should i say the shortness of the report
in my nine years as a member of this parliament it is the shortest report i have ever seen from any socialist in the committee on employment and social affairs and i hope he has set a precedent for some of his colleagues to follow but we shall come back to that later
i was also glad and i thank him for this that he said that the reason for this short report was because quite correctly the major stakeholders had both said they were in favour of this common position leading the council to support it
the trade union side and the business side not just the general business side but the specific business side those responsible for agency workers all said collectively for whatever set of reasons yes they could sign up to it
i think there is a moral for us as politicians here that when the stakeholders themselves say that this is what they want i do think we have a responsibility to try and facilitate that wherever possible so i do thank him for using the argument of consensus to get that through
i would finally thank the minister for his reminder to those who may need reminding that when the council put together this common position it was done as part of a package with the working time directive
indeed our group briefly considered that maybe in the timing of the parliamentary work we should put both dossiers together and discuss them in december
but having reflected further and because i know the french presidency was very keen to get this show on the road we were very happy to go along with that so that indeed we could move on
that i think is the message of this dossier let us move on
when we come to the second part of the package on the working time directive i hope that from our part we will also show responsibility and move on
