There will be an internal market for services because we are in the process of clarifying the confusion in people’s minds over the services directive and the posted workers directive. We need to dispel the fears that greater freedom for businesses to provide services across the EU could lead to social dumping. We need to bring clarity to the debate over the scope of the services directive, and thus show that we don't want a Europe of fake self-employed migrant workers. If this can be clarified, then we have a great opportunity to create a genuinely fair framework for a European services market. Given the different legal systems in the 25 member states, you have to ensure that people working in public service or in services of general interest like those who work in the public sector, should not be exposed to competition in one fell swoop. But even if you exclude those areas, you won’t have too many exemptions from the scope of the directive.

 

 

Member states and the European Union have to invest in education, research and life-long learning for working people. They have to ensure that there is affordable access to education and professional qualifications. This is a question that depends first and foremost on budgetary policy. In the EU, we must clearly make a permanent shift away from spending on agricultural policy to the financing of innovation. That won't happen overnight but we must make a start. And in national policy we must shift spending to other policy areas. What those are varies from one country to another that's why you can't say that all countries should do the same thing. But on the basis of each country's particular situation we should ensure that the Lisbon goals are the first priority for each country's financing policies.

 

 

Turkey will not be a member of the EU in ten years’ time. Croatia has good economic prospects and the recent arrest of indicted war criminal General Ante Gotovina has brought Croatia a step nearer to EU membership because it shows that the country is prepared to bring people to justice and the government is willing to enforce the rule of law and cooperate with the International Tribunal in the Hague. I believe that Croatia has a good chance of becoming a member of the European Union in the medium-term. Over the next ten years it’s more likely that Croatia will have become a member than Turkey.

 

 

If we don't actively do something to tackle public doubts then yes. That is most of all true if the EU doesn't reform itself. The criticisms that people make about the EU being ineffective are justified. If you look at the Council of Ministers you can’t say that they are effective. But when the same Council, in the form of the heads of state and government, can’t decide on anything other than enlarging the EU, that leads to scepticism among citizens. That also means that before we even start talking about enlargement, we need to have the Constitution and the institutional reforms that it contains.

 

 

If he or she were to be head of a European government, then yes. But if not, then it doesn’t make any sense. Until then, the Commission President should be elected by the European Parliament. The President could even come from within the Parliament. For example, an MEP standing for election to the Parliament could then seek to be elected as Commission President. That would help voters to identify more clearly in European Parliament elections what they are voting for.

 

 

I think they are already actively doing just that. I know of no place in Europe where there is more concrete, precise, tough discussion of the human rights situation in Russia than the European Parliament, independent of economic interests.

 

 

We need a strategy for China, and it should follow the principle laid down by former German Chancellor Willy Brandt in his Ostpolitik towards former east Germany: “change through ever closer contact”. If through trade you manage at the same time to import democratic values in such a country, then you can achieve something. If you think that through a trade boycott you can force a heavily armed nuclear power like China to carry out democratic change you’re making a mistake.

 

But if there are more personal contacts, with small steps towards an improvement in human rights, you can achieve something. We experienced this in Germany with the Passierschein (transit papers) agreements in the 1960s. They were small economic agreements between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic that gave permission for people from West Berlin to visit relatives in East Berlin. When people met, there were inevitably discussions about democracy in the West, and people also took newspapers with them. Change through ever closer contact is a constructive model for a strategy with China.