Text tabled : A6-0266/2009

  Neena Gill (PSE), in writing. − I welcome this report because it concerns an issue I have been working on for some time now. On a visit to the Michelin factory in Stoke-on-Trent, management and trades unions explained to me their support for the mobilisation of the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund.

I have since written to the Business and Enterprise Minister in the UK, Lord Mandelson, to request he consider an application to the EU for the activation of the Adjustment Fund. It strikes me, as it did the people I met at Michelin, that this fund needs to be put in place as soon as possible. This is exactly the kind of thing the EU was set up for – to collectively help Member States, and most importantly, their workers, at times of difficulty.

Because the fund is not about simply bailing out companies – it is about supporting a strategy which will lead to sustainable growth and employment for the future. The report’s focus on the importance of small business for economic recovery, and the stress that the fund places on skills and training, will do much to ensure that people who lose their jobs will be reintegrated into the labour market.