Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-097"

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"en.20031203.7.3-097"2
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"Madam President, 'sticks and carrots' quoth Mr Watson: there were plenty of sticks and carrots in the Stability Pact - sticks for the workers and carrots for the managers, sticks for the unemployed and carrots for the financiers. Not only was the Stability Pact socially unfair, it was totally unworkable, and the tragedy about breaking it is not that we did not wish it to be respected, it is that it was ever set up. That was the real tragedy. If we had stuck to the Maastricht criteria with the same severity that the Stability Pact asks us to stick to the three per cent, would there be a euro today? Would there be a euro, Commissioner? I ask everybody here to put their hand on their heart and answer that question honestly, like honest people who want rules to be respected. The second point about this is that the Commission tells us that it will continue applying the Pact. If the same case happens again, how will the Pact be applied? I hope with the same latitude that was shown to France and Germany. It would be unfair for a different standard to be applied to a small country in the future. It has also been suggested that the deficits of today are the taxes of tomorrow. How very simple! The deficits of today can also be the investment of today, which will produce the higher income of tomorrow, from which higher taxes can easily be paid. So I suggest we stop making virtuous speeches here and go and enrol in a good course of elementary macroeconomics, which some of us here seem to need - of course, I am not including the Minister in this comment. He seems to know about it - or has learned about it - and I am grateful to him for that. The substance of the matter is that today we need expansionary, rather than contractionary, economic policy. Just as there is inflationary stability, there can also be deflationary stability. From that point of view the demise of the Stability Pact is good for stability."@en1
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