Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20040915.6.3-151"2
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".
Mr President, I would firstly like to thank all the honourable Members who have contributed to this debate, sometimes with support, sometimes with critical support and sometimes simply with criticism.
The debate – and the President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Zalm, has said this as well – must lead us, and I trust that it will lead us, in November, on the second analysis by Ecofin of the adaptation and improvement of the Stability and Growth Pact, to a level of agreement and consensus between the Member States, at Council level, and between the Council and the Commission, which is even greater than the very considerable level of agreement demonstrated last weekend.
Changes to the rules will be necessary, as few as possible. In any event, the touchstone of the discussion must not be whether or not an article, an item or a paragraph of a regulation should be changed. The touchstone will be whether the reason why it has become necessary to change that regulation has been agreed, is reasonable and is in accordance with our objectives of budgetary stability, of maintaining a framework for fiscal and economic governance and of that framework preserving the stability and growth of the European Economic and Monetary Union.
Finally, Mr President, a comment on the issue often mentioned in many speeches from France and Germany. The judgment of the Court of Justice of 13 July basically considered the European Commission to be right. The Council was not entitled to act as it did last November. We must now apply the Treaty, as interpreted by the Court of Justice. The Council has no choice but to respect the Commission’s right to initiative. The Commission is the guardian of the Treaties and must therefore ensure compliance with the rules of the Treaties and their implementation by means of the Stability and Growth Pact in force and we are committed to doing this and we are going to act on the basis of the judgement of the Court of Justice.
What action are we going to take? We are following the development of the public finances of many Member States very closely, but in particular that of France and Germany during 2004, and the budgets that each of the two governments are beginning to draw up and which they will communicate for discussion to their parliaments in the coming months, before the end of the year.
At the end of October, when we will know the content of the budgetary policies formally announced by the two governments and while we await the final decision of their respective parliaments, the Commission will publish its estimate and economic forecasts and we will estimate how public debt in France and Germany may develop in 2004 – we could practically give an accurate estimate now, but I would prefer to wait until October – and our estimate for 2005.
On the basis of the Commission’s economic forecasts and with the precise information we will have in the weeks following the publication of those assessments of the real and concrete content of the budgetary policies agreed by both of those countries for 2005, the Commission, employing its right to initiative and carrying out its duty fully, will tell the Council what its proposal is. The Council will have to take the appropriate decisions, of course, in a climate of cooperation, but naturally with the greatest respect for the principles and rules laid down in the Treaties and in the regulations in force in the field of budgetary stability.
All these contributions will be extremely useful for me as I carry out my future duties as Commissioner responsible, insofar as it falls to me, for carrying out this adaptation and improvement of the Stability and Growth Pact and of economic governance in general, and they seem to me extremely useful in terms of communicating arguments and objectives on such an important issue as the economy of the Member States of the Union and of the European Union as a whole from Parliament to the public.
I would like to say once again – I have done so in my initial speech and it has been said in several of your speeches, but I want to repeat it in this final speech – that the Treaty is not in question, nor what the Treaty says about public finances and about budgetary stability. The limit of 3% of GDP for the public deficits of the Member States of the Economic and Monetary Union and the limit of 60%, in relation to GDP, for public debt remain in force. The countries that are not complying with these limits are obliged to do so.
They do not remain in force for no good reason, but because one of the objectives of the Economic and Monetary Union must continue to be budgetary stability as a
condition for the effectiveness of the extremely important political decision we took when launching the Economic and Monetary Union and, in particular, the creation of the single currency. And it is still necessary to preserve the objective of budgetary stability and those reference values by means of the system of rules – as has been said on many occasions during the debate.
But we must also be aware that the ultimate objective of the Economic and Monetary Union, of the budgetary stability of economic policies, is to guarantee more growth and well-being for some of our citizens. And some of you have expressed the opinion that the debate on the reform of the pact could even in some way affect the stability of our currency, the euro. I do not believe that is the case if the debate is held within the limits we have set for it as in the Council last weekend and as in this debate today in Parliament.
What has been discussed is the fact that the eurozone and the European Union as a whole are growing less than other areas of the world. We have more stability, thanks to the decisions we have taken within the framework of the Economic and Monetary Union, but we have less growth. And that is a response we must find not only through the instrument of the Stability and Growth Pact, but also by rereading it, revising it and adapting it, introducing more economic rationality into it, taking account of the heterogeneous nature of the European Union of 25 following enlargement, taking account of the fact that the Treaty also talks about the need to preserve the sustainability of public finances and not just of preserving and ensuring budgetary balance in each financial year, by monitoring public deficit, and bearing in mind that, over the years the Stability and Growth Pact has been applied, its credibility has suffered because the rules in force have not always been adopted and applied by the institution which must ultimately do so, which is the Council.
We must therefore strengthen the pact, the framework for budgetary surveillance and our instruments for economic governance. And how must we do this? With more flexibility or more rigour? With both things.
In certain respects, we must be more flexible, because experience shows us that the room for manoeuvre, which a reasonable interpretation of the rules we decided upon allows us, is not sufficient to take account of very powerful arguments arising from economic rationality, from the specific situation of the economy of the country at a particular time. And in other respects we must be more rigorous, such as in our surveillance of the evolution of levels of public debt or in the mechanisms for application of the Pact for example, both in the preventive part and in the corrective part of the Pact, in the excessive deficit mechanism. We must take account of the economic cycle, preserve equality of treatment for each and every country – and this is a task the Commission identifies itself with in particular – and ensure better compliance. And we must link the Pact better with the other instruments of economic governance – as many speakers have said this afternoon – the Lisbon Agenda and the economic growth objectives in order to make the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Union the most competitive area in the world and, at the same time, the most socially cohesive and the most sustainable from an environmental point of view.
Does this require a debate? The Commission believes this is obvious. Should this debate take place within a certain limits? Of course, and that is established in the Commission's Communication. Must we seek agreement and the greatest possible degree of consensus in our dialogue and cooperation with the Council? I believe this is absolutely essential."@en1
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