Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-05-Speech-2-212"
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"en.20090505.22.2-212"2
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"Mr President, the next Council meeting must consider the grave economic and social situation caused by the crisis in capitalism and neoliberal policies. The leaders of the European Union can no longer evade their responsibilities. Neither can all those who pushed into the background the defence of production and social and labour rights in order to give priority to the liberalism of the Lisbon Strategy, the irrational criteria of the Stability and Growth Pact, and the approach taken by the European Central Bank, with its false independence which has in fact only ever served the interests of economic and financial groups.
The European Commission’s current forecasts, which point to a fall in GDP of around 4% this year, with stabilisation only in 2010, accompanied by a loss of 8.5 million jobs over these two years and a prediction that the unemployment rate will reach around 11%, are very serious and demonstrate the ineffectiveness of the measures taken to date.
Who can be indifferent to this exponential growth in unemployment, which may reach 30 million unemployed in the European Union? We therefore need to urgently break away from the neoliberal policies at Community level that have worsened the crisis in capitalism. We urgently need to give priority to the creation of jobs with rights, to the defence of Community-based production, to the improvement of public services and to a fair distribution of income in order to reduce poverty. We urgently need economic and social cohesion to stop being merely an expression without any clear content, and we need the principle of ‘save yourself if you can’ to be dropped.
We need an extra EU budget to ensure that there is solidarity with and increased support for the people most affected and for the weakest economies. We need to create jobs with rights for young people, women and the unemployed, increase the purchasing power of the population, stimulate demand and support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
Instead of continuing to insist on the draft Treaty of Lisbon, we need to respect the sovereign decision of the Irish people.
Instead of continuing to insist on priority for the financial sector, we need to put a stop to tax havens and give priority to the productive sectors of the European Union, doing away with the Stability and Growth Pact and replacing it with a social development and progress pact.
Instead of continuing to liberalise regulations and increase labour market flexibility, we need to concentrate on public investment, which can stimulate the productive sectors, prevent redundancies, reduce the average working day without any loss of pay, prevent unemployment, and ensure universal access to high-quality public services in health, education and training, research, housing, justice and the environment.
This is what the people of our countries expect from us. If we want more European citizens to take part in the European elections, then we must respond in the way that the general public and workers in our countries want and deserve."@en1
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