Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-21-Speech-1-047"
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"en.20021021.4.1-047"2
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"Mr President of the Commission, I believe that in talking about stupidity, you invoked the spirit of the law. Stupidity is a term that you seem to favour, as you use it two lines further on in the same article, saying that you are not stupid for wanting to throw out public services as France has done. So I think someone wanted to make you say more, or less, than what you wanted to say, and perhaps someone wanted to cover up what you were saying elsewhere in this article, that, for example, a monetary union without economic union would be pure madness.
If today we give up any coordination of economic policies, what will be left of our ability to use the euro? That is the problem we are facing. Today, the Member States are, quite rightly, demanding budgetary competence. But they are forgetting, or do not want to see, that this competence must be coordinated with economic policies. Today, however, we do not know how to coordinate these economic policies. Parliament has made its suggestions. They must be considered and developed so that finally the broad lines of economic policy have a purpose, namely that the Member States agree to make them their own when laying down their own guidelines.
Having said that, Mr Prodi, you have opened a debate that I believe to be important. In order for it to take place intelligently, we must never give up on the serious nature of the budget. We must consider a more important role for the Commission in the early warning procedures, in defining the European general interest. Have we given enough consideration to what happened when the UMTS licences were granted? Perhaps it would have been better to have a stronger Commission then, in terms of its proposals, just as, in certain exceptional circumstances, the Member States need to feel guided by the Commission leadership. I am thinking, for example, of the oil crisis. On a day-to-day basis, however, the Commission must stand by the Member States, supporting them, not intervening like a policeman at critical moments.
In the debate that is about to take place, that you have launched and that we would like to have, we need to consider the proper coordination of the various criteria, and in particular, the criterion of debt sustainability. That is what I believe to be the most important thing in the long term."@en1
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