Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-14-Speech-3-217"
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"en.20010214.6.3-217"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, economic policy in Europe has chalked up a huge success and a huge failure. Its success is, of course, the single currency; its failure is that we have still been unable to mop up unemployment and achieve full employment. What we wonder is why, despite our success with the one, we cannot achieve the same degree of success with the other. In this sense, I should like to congratulate our rapporteur, Mr Bullmann, both on the professionalism of his work and on his enthusiasm for the resolutions of the European Council in Lisbon, which try to build a bridge from our success in the monetary sector towards similar success in the real sector, the real economy.
If you define Europe not by its political borders but by its economic borders; in other words, if you include eastern Europe, Russia and North Africa, then you will see that we have the largest market in the world, with the highest per capita income and the largest concentration of educated workers. Not even in Latin America or Asia or the whole of America do these three factors exist side by side. On this basis, we can work miracles, and from this point of view, the Lisbon objectives are commensurate with our abilities. The problem is: are our policies for implementing the objectives equally commensurate?
I have the impression that, when it comes to implementation, we are overly impressed by the huge success of the process of nominal convergence. However, I am not convinced that we are making proper use of our experience in the real economy. Mutual monitoring, the famous peer pressure which we now want to transfer to the real economy, was not the only factor. We must not forget the other factors, i.e. the simple, purely quantitatively defined objective of reducing inflation. We must not forget that, in the case of the euro, there was a clear time limit: either you boarded the train, or the train left without you. We must not forget that the aim of squeezing inflation took absolute priority and, in my personal estimate, even worked to the detriment of employment.
If we really want to transfer this method to the real economy, we should apply the wisdom of one quantitative target and one simple tool. You do not need a great deal of wisdom in order to determine what they are. The target is full employment and the method is to increase the quantity and quality of investments. This combination has the additional advantage of indirectly resolving
as they say in chess – the second major objective of technological progress. We should have had the courage to give these targets the same absolute priority as we gave legal stability. I am not sure if we have the courage to do so now. We have, of course, made some progress by quantifying the indicators, but typically here too, there are no detailed, analytical indicators; the Commission has not proposed analytical indicators, Commissioner, on investments, public, private, infrastructure, on so many things we should like to promote. And the rapporteur's ambitious efforts notwithstanding, I should like to point out that increasing the number of quantitative indicators does not lead us into dead-end street, because we may find ourselves in a position where, to quote the Bible, someone one day says to the Commission: Μartha, Μartha, thou art careful, and troubled about many things·"@en1
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