Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-340"
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"en.20090324.28.2-340"2
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"Mr President, I am glad to see the Prime Minister here. In view of the little consideration with which he viewed the EU and the European Parliament for a long time, I take his presence here as a good sign that people can change.
Nice speech, Mr Brown, but what are you ready to do, really?
I am also confident that, perhaps, after today, Prime Minister, you will announce the end of a couple of opt-outs or even, as my friend Graham Watson said, announce the entry of the UK in the euro.
However, I have to remind you that on most of the issues you mentioned – democratic reforms, social issues, the Working Time Directive, taxes – your Government was on the wrong side.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Prime Minister, you, together with a fair number of your colleagues and our own President Barroso, are responsible for the fact that the European Union does not have any financial regulation instruments or fiscal and budgetary policies that today would be so valuable in allowing us to tackle the crisis. It is good to remember that because, when the aim is to propose credible solutions, it is good manners to admit that mistakes were initially made.
So let us look at the credibility of this crusade against tax havens. They seem a very easy target – everyone hates them – but the reality is slightly different. There is even a suspicion that we talk about them so much because we cannot agree on much else to talk about.
Prime Minister, we believe that it is important to stop thinking that it is impossible to limit free movement of capital, and that the millions of euro squandered on speculation cannot be put to good use. We must stop, not regulate, the actions of speculative funds. We must bring the banks back to a point where they do the job for which they were invented in Tuscany many centuries ago: financing the real economy.
Stepping up market surveillance is not enough; we must cut the profits of those who speculate. It should be pointed out that the mafia today has EUR 120 billion stashed away in tax havens. We must aim decisively for double declarations and double transparency: those who deposit money in another country must declare it. Banks which receive deposits must declare them. There is no middle ground. The rest is just idle talk, and I fear that idle talk will bury us if the G20 does not produce a result that is more powerful than the babble we hear around us.
Prime Minister, just like your predecessor, here you have used strong and emotive words in the language of Shakespeare, but, again like him, you have few concrete proposals. You spoke of the ecological rehabilitation of the environment. Yet under your government’s plan, only 7% of investment is going towards environmental projects, while South Korea and China and even the United States are setting a pace that our fine words will be unable to keep up with.
You spoke of Copenhagen, but again, the European Council did not reach an agreement on a climate-change fund for developing countries. You know only too well, however, that without a substantial financial commitment, Copenhagen is destined to fail and, with it, our ambitions to govern climate change, too."@en1
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