Minister for European Affairs, Dick Roche, TD, rejects claim that the Reform Treaty is a “step backwards” for the internal market.

Minister Dick Roche, T.D., today said that the European Union’s single market will continue to create the conditions for Irish business to prosper.  “Under the Reform Treaty, competition will continue to be a cornerstone of the European Union” he said.

Rejecting recent comments by Libertas that the “competition clause has been dropped” from the Reform Treaty, Minister Roche said that, “when drafting the Reform Treaty, Member States made fully clear that competition will remain a driving force for the proper functioning of the internal market”. 

“Member States, with Ireland’s strong support, agreed a Protocol on the internal market which recognises the need to ensure that competition is undistorted.  This Protocol forms an integral part of the Treaty and has the same legal value as Treaty provisions.  European employers welcomed the Treaty outcome on the internal market.” 

Minister Roche added that “to suggest, as Libertas does, that this is ‘a massive step backwards’ is highly inaccurate and misleading.  Ireland has been a major beneficiary of the EU’s single market and, in negotiating the Reform Treaty, the Government would not have supported anything that could have undermined something from which Ireland has derived such huge benefit.  The Reform Treaty is designed to strengthen the EU for the future and this is something that is in Ireland’s clear interest.”

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Press
15/1/08