Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-03-Speech-3-328"
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank the two rapporteurs very much. There is no doubt that what has been said this evening is going to help us in our subsequent work.
The same can be said of the UMTSs. If we had debated, before taking the decision, how to deal with the possibilities and difficulties which one or other option with regard to licences for third-generation mobiles could pose, there is no doubt that we could have prevented some of the subsequent problems. We are not saying that we should all do the same. We are saying that we can hold discussions together in order to try to decide on a framework, which includes the different national decisions and allows us to take a more coherent position.
I said that there is a second aspect to prior information and that is that ministers should take Community elements into consideration when defining their national policy. And I relate this reference to the one made by Mrs Bères in relation to increasing national participation in the broad guidelines for economic policy. Until now, it has more or less been considered that we had two processes which did not necessarily converge. On the one hand, reaching an agreement on the broad guidelines for economic policy in Brussels, in Luxembourg; on the other, defining our national economic and budgetary policies. And each process took a different route. It was also believed that compliance with the Stability Pact was sufficient to satisfy the coherence and consistency of the system which we have implemented for economic policy coordination.
It is becoming increasingly clear to us that the two instruments we have, the Stability Pact and the broad guidelines for economic policy, are key elements. And the broad guidelines for economic policy, if they are actually approved by the ministers as a real commitment to be applied in each of the Member States, must reflect the budgetary policy which each minister wants and must present to their national Parliament.
I believe that this would help us enormously in terms of a better interrelationship between the decisions adopted at Community level and the decisions adopted by national Parliaments. In this respect, the Commission believes that this idea of the debate is essential and we will fully support it.
However – and this is a point which I also wanted to comment on – it is true that we should not overly complicate the procedures. Therefore, we are more cautious about certain ideas considered on the issue of macroeconomic dialogue. It is absolutely clear that we have to improve its efficiency on the level of political dialogue, but we believe that we also have to maintain its character of frank and confidential exchange and, in this respect, it is essential to maintain this informal framework for debate and not formalise its process too much by complicating it and making the whole process of debate relating to this point less productive.
I would therefore like to end my comments on this first report by pointing out that the services of the Commission are currently looking into the implementation of some of the proposals included in the resolution, I have taken note of a series of suggestions that have been made this evening and we are naturally going to pay particular attention to them when producing our final proposal.
In relation to the report by Mrs Peijs, I would firstly also like to thank her for her suggestions and comments, but I would like to focus on just three or four points that I think are important.
Firstly, I fully agree with the idea that, in the context of the introduction of the euro, the credibility of a healthy public finance policy which is compatible with the euro is essential. It is true that, in our view, public finances – we have said this clearly this evening – must be adequate for both crisis situations and for good economic situations. In your report you refer to automatic stabilisers – and I do not believe that there is any great divergence between us on the analysis of this point. We believe, like you, that they must play a fundamental role, both at times of growth and at times of slow-down of the economy.
We are grateful for your reference to tax reductions. The Commission has been arguing that all tax reductions must respond to certain criteria, which are contained in your report, and which we believe are essential to maintaining the idea of quality of public finances. No doubt if we were to debate tax reductions now, elements such as the promotion of consumption would be of more importance than would have been the case a few months ago, given that that is one of the issues we are concerned about. But the idea of tax reductions can certainly be included in practice, in all cases, in the criteria contained in the document and which you support.
Finally, a comment on the sustainability of public finances in the long term. There have been other comments on the labour market, on how we must move ahead, on coherence in relation to work, pensions, etc. In my opinion, all these elements will be dealt with within a broader vision of the labour market, while the finance ministers must pay particular attention to public finances and, in this respect, to the difficulties which may arise in the funding of social security given the global budgetary deficits of all public administrations.
I will begin by commenting on the Bères report and I would like to express my satisfaction with Parliament’s motion for a resolution which supports the strengthening of economic policy coordination within the euro area.
The idea we are working with at the moment – and on the basis of your report, as you know, progress has already been made on some points – is not that reference be made by means of a short paragraph on the stability programmes, but that the stability programmes annually take up the necessary data to carry out an adequate evaluation of the evolution of public finances in relation to problems of ageing. Nevertheless, in our view, the idea of including this information in the stability programmes is not because we believe they are problems which must be resolved through annual decisions – they need more long-term decisions – but because we felt it was appropriate to introduce new processes for approaching, analysing and monitoring the evolution of public finances.
Our idea is that, every four or five years, in each country, a more in-depth analysis should be carried out – it may be a supplement to the documents from the stability programme – on long-term public finances with the obvious fundamental problem of the ageing of the population and from which, nevertheless, when updating the annual programmes we only take the most necessary basic information.
I would like to end by thanking you all once again for your cooperation and the useful ideas you have offered us, which we will take into account as far as possible.
We must not forget that economic policy coordination is an obligation laid down in the Treaty. The Treaty makes it very clear that our model is based on a single monetary policy and on national, but coordinated, economic policies. This is a key element of our model.
It is true that coordination is still going through a learning phase. It is also true that we have increasingly greater interdependence – especially in the euro area but also in the Union in general – and this requires that the content, the systems and the instruments we use are constantly being reviewed. That is why I must especially welcome the report which Parliament has produced and salute Mrs Bères and all of those members of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs who have participated in her magnificent work. I believe that this work, in many respects, goes further than the Commission’s proposal, particularly with regard to one fundamental aspect, the increase in national participation in economic policy coordination.
I would like to highlight two essential elements of the report – and I will comment on the various interventions in relation to them. The first is the need to strengthen coordination, the second the need to increase the democratic debate and national participation.
With regard to the content of the coordination, I think it is worth expanding on certain points. The report supports the Commission’s proposals on the production of periodic reports on the economy of the euro area. Today I can tell you that our idea – we have continued to work on this issue – is that we must have detailed economic analyses but also relevant proposals on economic policy. We must go further than specific analysis.
In her speech, Mrs Bères raised the need to improve statistics and the assessment of policies. It is true that we have made progress with the statistical plans for the Union’s monetary area, however, we must go further. It is partly a problem of bringing national statistics into line with new realities, it is partly a problem of money, but, in some cases, it is neither of these problems, but rather the problem of acquiring the data necessary for a good definition of economic policy more quickly. This perhaps means that in the future we will have to consider the need for our own statistical information which is not an aggregate of national statistics. This would certainly be a key element if we are to be able to act within a time frame similar to that available to other economic authorities.
She makes a reference in her report which I believe to be fundamental in relation to trying to achieve a common vision of the impact of economic cycles on public finances. We have held part of this debate today – I will comment later when I talk about the report by Mrs Peijs – but we believe it is essential for the ECOFIN Council to produce a methodology as soon as possible, allowing us to examine the concept of structural deficit by means of the same criteria. And we are working on this, which seems to us essential, precisely to allow these automatic stabilisers to come into play depending on the extent to which the budgetary situation of each of the Member States allow it, but applying the same criteria in all cases.
A further point relating to the first element I mentioned, the content of coordination, is that of prior information. This is a point which always gives rise to a degree of debate and discussion. When we talk about prior information, we are talking about two different things. We are talking firstly about the other partners of the Eurogroup knowing the broad guidelines for those essential elements of a national economic policy which may eventually have an affect on the rest. Let us take one case: the tax reduction measures adopted last year as a result of the oil crisis. There is no doubt that if we had acted as we have acted this year on the issue of insurance cover for airlines, we would have achieved a better result and a better approach from the point of view of the Union’s position."@en1
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