1/2 hour committee debate. The Commission has said it will accept major change. EU members and the European parliament have the final say. Any law is unlikely to come into force before the end of the decade. "We certainly don't get new jobs by protecting old ones ... This debate has brought about xenophobia in a very ugly way," said Lasse Antero Lehtinen, a Socialist member of the committee. Alexander Stubb of the conservative EPP group rejected what he called any "step backwards from what we have... a brake on integration". --More 2326 Local Time 2026 GMT
