Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-04-Speech-1-089"
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"en.20050704.17.1-089"2
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".
Mr Trichet, Commissioner Almunia, ladies and gentlemen, the story of the euro and of the European Central Bank is one of undoubted success. Despite political upheavals, the euro is proving itself to be quite stable, is becoming more and more a major reserve currency, and, as we have heard, the EU’s new Member States are keen to introduce it at home without delay.
The ECB’s work has not exactly been made any easier by various economic developments in the eurozone and by political pressure, but it has nonetheless, from the very outset, maintained its independence and behaved in a professional manner. I would encourage the European Central Bank to maintain its commitment to independence and continue to regard the defence of the euro’s stability as its primary function. This, as you can see, is where there is a great gulf between the groups in this House, and Mr dos Santos and I are not of one mind.
One reason why the conditions under which the ECB operates are problematic is that the reform of the Stability Pact largely did away with the second pillar of the euro’s stability, leaving the ECB with principal responsibility for currency stability. This House has proposed various ways of improving the implementation of the reform in practice, all of which the Council has disregarded, thereby indicating that, although the finance ministers may well not see the relaxation of the Pact as desirable, they do at any rate acquiesce in it with a degree of approval. Why this should be so is explained not least by the fact that the big countries in the eurozone – Germany, France and Italy – have been breaching the terms of the Pact for years without being called to account for it. Germany will be unable to comply with the Pact’s requirements over the next two years, and certainly not this year. As we have just heard, Italy breached the Pact as early as 2003, and it, too, needs another two years to get back in the clear.
As I draw to my close, let me say that the ECB Board should avail itself of the option provided for by Article 10 of its statutes to take decisions by simple majority rather than seeking consensus at any price. Consensus often represents no more than the lowest common denominator, and the Bank should not be satisfied with it. I can well understand how, at a time of great political pressure such as the present, the ECB is unwilling to publish minutes, let alone records showing who voted for what, but I do hope that the day will come when the minutes can be published, along with indications of the way the votes went.
Last but not least, I would like to endorse what Mr Lauk said about the need for you to follow the US Federal Reserve’s example and publish a
containing a detailed analysis of the ways in which individual countries’ economies develop."@en1
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