Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-21-Speech-1-041"
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"en.20021021.4.1-041"2
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"Mr Prodi, like previous speakers, I must congratulate you, as Mr Lipietz has just done, on your lucidity and your courage, as you have maintained your position. In particular, I would like to congratulate you on your political sense, as you have basically just instigated the only debate that matters to voters and to European public opinion: is Europe capable of providing these countries with growth, as well as just stability?
Mr Prodi, I would like to encourage you not to stop this good work, and not to be lucid by halves. The Stability and Growth Pact is stupid, but, as Mr Solbes says, we need to keep it. The Treaty of Nice is stupid, but, thank God, says Mr Cox, it has been ratified. Enlargement is stupid, says Mr Barnier, because it multiplies the risk of blockages and therefore of weaknesses, but it will be ratified at the forthcoming Copenhagen Summit.
So, Mr Prodi, since lucidity has struck you like Paul on the road to Damascus, do not stop there. What is stupid about the Stability and Growth Pact is not so much the form as the content. What is stupid is believing that different societies, which develop differently, can withstand being caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the money rate and a tighter budget. What is stupid is believing that an ageing Germany, as Mr Eichel said only this morning, can impose this lifelong tenancy policy on nations which, like France, are experiencing natural demographic regeneration and must therefore invest in the future. It is growth that we need, Mr Prodi, growth, a term that your Pact – which, indeed, is no longer really your Pact – has forgotten along the way. How is growth achieved? It is achieved with interest rates that are lower, not higher than inflation, as your Central Bank, the most rigid and therefore, according to you, the most stupid of all the European institutions, insists on imposing on Euroland. Persisting with this policy, Mr Prodi, with the unemployment we are currently experiencing, will not only be stupid, but will soon, I believe, become criminal."@en1
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