China has become a society on the move, where people from the remotest provinces travel routinely for work and pleasure.

There were space-liners and battleships, launches and factory-ships, ships of all kinds and for all purposes, containing all the machinery of a complex society on the move.

Whilst in France, the debate on the competence and role of the Union is particularly animated, we have here, with this draft directive, the opportunity to demonstrate that the Union is in touch with a society on the move, and that it can listen and respond to its citizens’ desires.