Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-346"
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"en.20090324.28.2-346"2
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"Mr President, it is a real tribute to this European Parliament that you can have so many diverse views expressed in such a short period of time by so many people, and I thank you for your views.
I hope, however, that even after the party politics has subsided, we will remember three things. First of all, that it is important that the world comes together to deal with this crisis. For us to sit apart, to be aloof, not to cooperate with other countries, is a recipe for failure and for an inability to solve a problem that is actually a global banking failure that has spread across the industrial economy. If we do not understand the problem, we will not be able to understand the solution.
We had a power cut right across the banking system right across the world. We found that banks that we thought were independent were completely entangled with other banks in different countries, and we have to deal with that problem. Whatever the party political lines that people want to adopt on this, this is the truth: we have to deal with the problem of global banking restructuring.
Europe did lead the way. We recapitalised our banks. Other countries have now done that. More than a trillion dollars has been spent on recapitalising banks across the world. We have now created insurance schemes and other schemes to deal with the impaired assets. This has to be done and it has to be done by global cooperation.
The second thing we have to realise, despite all the different political views in this Parliament, is that global cooperation – not just in banking institutions, but global cooperation in other areas, in fiscal and monetary policy and in trade – has to be a very important part of how we approach the future. Like it or like it not, the world is changing incredibly fast. More manufacturing is being done in Asia than in Europe. There is trade round the world at a speed that we have never seen before until this crisis, and we have to deal with that by creating a global trading environment which is free, but also fair. Whatever the views in this Parliament, I think people have to face up to that as well.
The third thing that comes out of this discussion for me is that to have global solutions to global problems we will also need not just our European institutions to be strong, but our global institutions to be strong. I was asked by people who were replying to my speech what we could do to reform these global institutions. The IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation are all organisations built in the 1940s to deal with the problems of the 1940s. We are in the year 2009. We had national capital markets. We now have global capital markets. We had domestic competition. We now have global competition. The world has changed fundamentally, and we need institutions that reflect a global economy in the way they operate and deal with the problems we have.
I was asked whether I would ensure, or try to ensure, that the International Monetary Fund had the resources necessary to deal with the problems of economies that could not at the moment sustain themselves when there was a flight of capital. The answer is: we must do that. I was asked whether the World Bank and other international institutions can help countries where there is substantial poverty being created as a result of the crisis. We have got to do that. I believe that the lesson of this crisis is that we are now in a global economy. There are global problems that need global solutions. That will require us to shape global institutions, and my message to this Parliament is very clear. Europe has led the way in so many other areas: it is now time to lead the way in creating the global institutions that will deal with the global problems we have, and provide global solutions.
This is a test of how we, having over the last 60 years created a Europe which has social protection as well as economic progress, can help shape a world where we have economic progress, environmental care and social justice at the same time. I believe that, whatever the different views expressed in this Parliament, there is a will across the peoples of this world to do that, and we, Europe, can play a major role in it."@en1
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