Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-193"
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Langen for his excellent report and all of the Members of Parliament, those in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in particular, for taking part in this discussion, which is of very great importance.
It is important to look after all of the countries which do not yet belong to the eurozone but which wish to and which are obliged to join, because all of the Member States, except those with an opt-out clause the United Kingdom and Denmark have the right to belong to the eurozone, but also the obligation to join it and to prepare themselves for doing so.
To this end, the aspects dealt with in the report that led to yours, on the preparations of the Member States that will join the eurozone over the coming years, are very important. I must tell you that, over the coming weeks, we are going to approve a new report, because from now on those reports will be published by the Commission every six months, rather than every year.
They are preparations of a technical nature, which are very important in terms of keeping public opinion informed and trying to prevent the kind of abuse in the exchange between the national currency and the single currency that has happened in the past in certain cases. We are learning from past experiences in order to cooperate with the candidates to join the euro, in order to prevent that abuse and in order to convince the citizens that moving from their national currency to the euro has no direct relationship with price rises, which can easily be avoided. Of course, the candidates for joining the eurozone must prepare themselves for fulfilling the criteria laid down in the Treaty, since the Treaty of Maastricht.
The debate has focussed more on this last aspect, because, as you know, a few weeks ago the Commission and the European Central Bank adopted convergence reports in response to the requests of Slovenia and Lithuania. In those reports, the Commission – and the European Central Bank – gave their interpretation of the application of the criteria laid down in the Treaty. I would insist that they are laid down in the Treaty, they are not defined by the European Commission artificially or on a whim. The criteria in the Treaty cannot be changed. Our obligation, therefore – and we have done this on other occasions and we will do so in the future – is to apply the Treaty and to apply it rigorously, since that is the only way to guarantee equal treatment for each and every Member State seeking to join the eurozone.
The most obvious discussion relates to the inflation criterion. Mr Langen talked about the criterion of the European Central Bank for maintaining price stability. I must tell you that it is not the same: the European Central Bank’s objective of maintaining price stability in the eurozone below 2% inflation, but close to it, is one thing, but the Treaty’s inflation criterion, which states that candidates for joining the eurozone must have an average inflation rate over the last twelve months below the reference value, which is the inflation of the three best performing countries in terms of inflation, plus 1.5%, is quite another.
This is laid down clearly in the Treaty. The Commission cannot alter the criteria in the Treaty; we have the duty to see them applied and that is what we have done. Since I have noted from certain comments in the report or in the amendments that the Commission is being asked for transparency in the way the Treaty is interpreted and applied, I am at Parliament’s service, not just to explain the convergence reports on Slovenia and Lithuania in detail, but also, if you wish, to provide the additional documentation on which the convergence report adopted by the Commission on 16 May is based."@en1
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