Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-13-Speech-1-085"
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"en.20061113.16.1-085"2
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Mr President, I should like first of all to apologise for being late. The Luxembourg-Strasbourg route is terribly congested at the entrance to Strasbourg, and traffic jams prevented me from arriving on time. Being conscious not to disturb the peace and quiet of the people of Strasbourg, I did not want to ‘go all out’; I scrupulously adhered to the highway code, and I was the first to suffer, since I have arrived late for this debate. Nevertheless, I should like to tell you that I attach importance to this debate because Parliament’s thoughts are not only important in themselves, but they also sustain the debates within Eurogroup, which I chair, assisted, inspired, driven and spurred on by the Commissioner for Monetary Affairs, my friend, Mr Almunia.
Workers in Europe have a right to know where they stand. We must stop giving the impression that the monetary Union is a business that is run by the ministers of finance, the bankers and the big investors and big businesses and that it actually works against the most basic rights of workers, who do, after all, make up the majority of the population in Europe.
I should like to say a word about the enlargement of the euro zone. I disagree with all those who imply that we, in the euro zone, have become stricter than before towards the new Member States which want to join the zone. The criteria that we are applying are those laid down in the Treaty of Maastricht. There has been no demand to change the criteria that we adopted when the Treaty was signed in Maastricht, on 7 February 1992. There is no question of abandoning the nominal convergence policy so as to replace it with a criterion that would omit the application of certain criteria, which the first members of the euro zone had to meet. As for those who call into question the nominal convergence criteria, in non-theoretical terms, I would guard them against the genuine risks of seeing the nominal convergence criteria replaced by real convergence criteria. The application of real convergence criteria would make the new Member States’ accession to the euro zone a very distant prospect. I therefore think that we would be wise to confine ourselves to the criteria that are currently ours, and this policy will enhance the credibility of the euro zone.
The way in which the euro zone is represented outside Europe does, in fact, warrant a lengthy explanation, but a brief explanation may suffice. The euro zone must be represented by a man, by a voice and by a seat within every international institution, and particularly within the international financial organisations. I am convinced that we will not have reached that stage when my term in office comes to an end on 1 January 2009. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that the day will come when even the most reticent of Europeans will realise that we are constantly making fools of ourselves in aspiring to co-manage the world’s monetary affairs if we continue to appear in international forums without a common plan of action. There you have a few comments that I felt it my right to make, while I apologise for not having been able to reply to all of the speakers, as I usually do; I had to reply briefly because I was not present when the speakers, with the commitment that characterises this Parliament, took the floor.
I should like to begin by saying, Mr President, that I believe that we have strong growth: it is expanding and it is not under threat, despite the attempts to dampen it down, particularly on the part of France. The employment rate is rising and unemployment is going down, although it has not attained acceptable levels. As regards growth, if we look at it in perspective, it is probably stronger than we think at present and is, at any rate, stronger than we thought six months ago.
In 2007, we shall have to see to what extent the cyclical slowdown in the United States affects the economic performance of the euro zone. At Eurogroup, we believe that the impact of the US slowdown on the euro zone economies will be less marked than in 2000-2001. We see that the US cyclical slowdown is primarily hitting the building sector and that it is not going to spread to other sectors of the US economy. Thus the impact on growth in the euro zone will be less marked than before, even though the country-by-country results will reveal some big differences.
Why have we attained a level of growth that seems more acceptable to us today than it did a few years ago? Firstly, because the euro has protected us to a huge extent over the past few years. It is never said enough, when the introduction of the euro is reviewed: the euro has protected us, is protecting us and will continue to protect us! Imagine the state of the European economy and the state of the European monetary systems if the euro had not existed during times of crisis! During this period, when preliminary work was being done on the euro, we witnessed the Latin American, Russian and South East Asian financial crises. Imagine how out of control our system would have let things get before the European system was implemented, at the time of the war in Iraq and of 11 September 2001! Imagine what the performance of the European currencies would be if they still existed, while the geostrategic dramas being played out are a constant cause for concern! Imagine how certain national currencies would have performed after the French and Dutch ‘No’ votes! The euro has protected us, and it has even protected countries that expressed some misgivings about Europe when it came to their approving the Constitutional Treaty.
The budgetary situation improved when, in all wisdom and with the agreement and often even the active support of Parliament, we amended and reformed the Stability and Growth Pact. Some people felt they were entitled to express their grave concerns following the adoption of the reformed pact. We see today that the mechanisms of the reformed pact are holding up well and that all the governments are making every effort to implement the main rules and guiding principles contained therein. The budget deficits are decreasing, and a general consensus is emerging, which is aimed at all of the Member States taking the prevention aspect of the Stability and Growth Pact seriously: they have all decided to allocate as a priority the fiscal surpluses resulting from the cyclical upturn to the reduction in the deficit and to the reduction in the level of public debt. I welcome that decision.
We, at Eurogroup, are giving more thought to stepping up budgetary controls and we are doing so together with the Commission, whose cordial manner of assisting Eurogroup’s presidency is proving to be very effective. We will see during our next meeting – which will be held towards the end of November, and thus after my visit to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, which you, Mrs Berès, expertly chair – how we can step up these budgetary controls. We will do so, from now on, on the basis of a Commission horizontal report, which will not fail to emphasise the real political problems that exist, including the political-economic ones, or to draft specific recommendations – the form of which we have yet to decide on – to the various Member States, and even to the entire euro zone.
With regard to the currency area as a whole, I should like us to take what is, by now, a long-standing invitation from the Commission seriously this year, and that is to devote a specific chapter of the European Council’s conclusions – when it examines the progress made by the Lisbon Strategy – to the euro zone, a chapter that includes the structural reforms that we will have to implement within the various member states of the euro zone.
As regards the structural reform problem, I would quite simply say, Mr President, that we underestimate the value that these structural reforms have already added to the coherence of the euro zone. I do not agree with all – or in general, some – of the structural reforms that have been implemented within all the Member States, but the fact is that, contrary to the idea, to the image that we very often present of the euro zone, an important raft of structural reforms is underway, and we are now already reaping the rewards of this far-reaching structural reform that we have implemented with regard to the euro zone.
When you look closely at the national reform programmes that the various Member States have introduced, you will see that there are many structural solutions, that they are generally in line with each other and that we must proceed further with this raft of reforms, without for all that lapsing into unsavoury neoliberalism and into a boundless, shameless form of frenetic deregulation, to which I am opposed because I still believe that the euro and the euro zone and the consistency of the policies that we will be implementing would gain in credibility if we supplemented our work on structural reforms with the implementation of a set of minimum social rights. This would guarantee all workers, throughout the euro zone, a number of minimum rights, which the Member States, in trying to enhance their national fighting spirits, could not undermine."@en1
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