Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-101"
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"en.20031203.7.3-101"2
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"Madam President, the Presidency has been criticised for not being neutral. The Italian Presidency, and I am quoting Commissioner Solbes, made a great effort to find a solution, but it is also true that it did not vote in favour of the Commission recommendations. The way a person votes is a strange way of defining neutrality.
In 2000, the European economy was doing well, the budgets were in order, the value of the euro was down against the dollar. In 2003, the economy is not doing particularly well, the budgets are not particularly in order and the value of the euro is up against the dollar. I believe that Isaac Newton would have some difficulty in understanding the cause and effect link between these two phenomena.
We need European governance. I believe that the Constitutional Treaty provides a basis for the development of European governance: I believe that, in the growth plan
proposed by the Presidency but which has now become a European plan
Europe has found a beneficial common undertaking in the form of a common economic policy: the first since the euro.
In 2003, Europe began an extremely intensive cycle of structural reforms. A cycle orchestrated by European reasoning and in a European spirit of structural reforms of the labour market and the welfare state. Reforms extended from Finland, Holland and Germany to Austria, France and Italy. Europe is being renewed, investing in its future and changing growth expectations through a cycle of structural measures and essential structural reforms. I believe that these are the things that we should be discussing.
The Presidency’s position has been totally impartial. It has nothing to gain and I believe that the whole of this debate should be carried out at European level, without following the conventions of domestic politics. I feel I can say this as the representative of a government which considers the Commission to be important - as guardian - but considers the financial market to be equally as important.
I am sorry to see that the group chairman, Mr Poettering, is not in the Chamber. If I am not mistaken, the chairman gave the example of two countries that have shifted their position: Ireland and Portugal. I am sorry to see that Ireland and Portugal, together with France and Germany, and Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg as well, voted in favour of the Commission’s conclusions.
Although he is not present today, I believe that a remark must be made on the position assumed by Mr Junker, who I do not believe thinks differently from the European Union, in the Eurogroup and then in Ecofin. The debate about ‘large’ and ‘small’ countries does not hold water. What we are talking about is a political process.
Frankly, I do not believe that the Commission has a political monopoly and I do not believe that rules are the same thing as sanctions. Monopolies are not a good thing for the economy, nor are they a good thing legally speaking. Rules can be interpreted in different ways: the Council’s Legal Service interpreted them in one way and the Council interpreted them in another way. The rules provide, not least, for a vote.
That is not all, though: sanctions are not the whole picture but a part of it and there is more to the rules than just sanctions. In essence, the Council decision can be welcomed in so far as the measures recommended to France and Germany are essentially the same as those proposed by Mr Prodi to the Commission. The substance is the same. The difference does not lie in the procedure: whether the procedure and the sanctions amount to the same thing or whether the procedure can be construed in a different way, the requirement of essential compliance with the Commission’s recommendations remains the same.
I believe that sanctions are essential, but that they are most useful if they do not have to be enforced. Sanctions work well if they do not have to work. Sanctions work well if they serve to bring about extension, prevention and adjustment. This was the case and this is absolutely clear. I do not believe that enforcing the sanctions was our objective; I believe that our objective was to ensure that the rules were respected and this was the case. I do not believe that we would have reached the point of enforcing sanctions, even for a small country. I would never have voted in favour of sanctions on a small country that had, like two large countries, complied with the Commission demands. The sanctions are one part of the rules; they are not all of the rules. The main part of the rules is something else and providing for sanctions is important. Seeing the sanctions work by extending the process is the essential thing. There was total compliance.
I concluded my speech saying that substance is more important than form, or rather that both are important, but that, up until now, there has been too much focus on one aspect of the procedure, as if it were made up of sanctions alone, and this is not the case. Moreover, there has been no talk about substance. The substance is very simple, and this came out of the debate with political force and intelligence. We are going though a difficult stage in Europe, in which we see a striking correlation between the extent of the problems and the governance capacity. The extent of the problems: two wars in two years, the breakdown of the geopolitical balance in the world, the collapse of the financial markets, unregulated competition created by China, the effects caused – perhaps more than predicted – by the changeover in some countries, local and sectoral crises.
All this in the face of limited governance capacity. The old Nation States no longer have the instruments for national governance and Europe does not yet have European governance. We do not have wide margins for budgetary policies because there is the Stability and Growth Pact and it is not being challenged. We do not have margins for interest rate policies, which are impartially decided using the constitutional reasoning of the European Central Bank. We cannot establish exchange rate policies because these are decided elsewhere."@en1
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