Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-03-Speech-4-014"
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"en.20030703.1.4-014"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner Solbes Mira recently said, quite rightly, that economic growth is Europe's great weakness. I would like to add that budget deficits in Europe are another great weakness. Worse still, it is precisely the biggest countries that have allowed these large deficits to build up. However, in view of this it is also important to emphasise that this does not apply to all the EU Member States. There are in all seven countries in the European Union that either have a balanced budget, or, as in the case of Sweden, Denmark and Finland, have a budget surplus. So it is not acceptable for people constantly to talk about the 15 Member States of the EU as if the same problems applied to all of them. No, they are very different, and I believe that is something we need to spell out very clearly.
There is also another factor here: there are countries that are not complying with the 3% criterion in the Stability Pact, especially of course France, Portugal and Germany. When I look at the Stability Pact I can only say that there is perhaps still a little glimmer of hope that it will survive. When you consider the debate going on in Germany, for example, and the fact that fiscal reform is not supposed to be counter-financed by cutting subsidies, then it is evident that Germany will be in breach of the pact for years to come. We do not therefore consider it acceptable for Europe's major economies to fail to implement the necessary structural reforms and thus fail to sort out their budgets.
Both the European Central Bank and the Commissioner responsible have repeatedly observed that it is precisely these countries that need to carry out structural reform in health services, for example, or in other areas across the whole range of social provision, because there are latent budgetary risks in these areas. This needs to be tackled once and for all.
I think it is fair to say that Mr Duisenberg put his stamp on the European Central Bank in the early years, when it was on the way to independence. This became apparent during the great many dialogues that we had in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, and for that, Mr Duisenberg, I would like to thank you personally. It is vital that we should continue to prevent the bank from being politicised, so that the dialogue with Parliament should be about providing information and not justifications. That needs to be emphasised too. I believe that Mr Duisenberg himself has done a great deal to safeguard that independence.
I would like to make one last point. Europe needs to be extremely flexible – we need flexible arrangements. But we do not want flexibility when it comes to Europe's Stability Pact. That is something I feel very strongly about."@en1
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