Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-07-15-Speech-3-059"
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"en.20090715.5.3-059"2
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".
Mr President, allow me first to congratulate you all collectively on having been elected as group leaders. I know that a number of you were elected with very strong support. I know, for example, that Martin Schulz was re-elected with very strong support in the social democrat group. It is important to be able to represent your respective groups strongly.
Therefore I will do what I can in my role. I have been tasked by the European Council with ensuring that our cooperation and our respect for the integrity of the European Parliament are united by clarity – whether under the Treaty of Nice or the Treaty of Lisbon – in our nomination of a candidate to the post of Commission President. Where José Manuel Barroso is concerned, it is important to state that he was unanimously supported in the European Council, that he was well known as a candidate and had already been introduced to the electorate prior to the election. Naturally, that made it easier for me to act – naturally respecting the fact that the European Parliament will be given opportunity, when you feel ready to make a decision, to say yes or no to the candidate nominated by the European Council. Meanwhile there is time for discussions, which I know José Manuel Barroso has also stated, and to have this type of dialogue concerning how European policy is to develop in the years ahead. I hope that this can now be agreed in accordance with the agreement that has been made. It is what the electorate of Europe now expects, and will enable us to act together with strength.
I very much welcomed the dialogue that we have had and the consultations which I was asked to introduce by the European Council during the month of June. This was done by EU Minister Cecilia Malmström. I also did it myself, both through telephone contacts and at the meeting that we had on a boat in the archipelago as we moved through the waters of Stockholm, sitting and discussing the situation that had arisen. I had been asked to investigate the possibility of electing José Manuel Barroso, appointed by the European Council, as president of the Commission for a second period of office.
A number of the matters that you touched upon are the main issues that I want to work on during the Swedish Presidency. Let me say that we are putting jobs first. We want to see a Europe in which more people have work. The discussion must start from how we achieve this. Just as Joseph Daul pointed out, I believe it is a matter of innovation and training; in other words, the things that basically drive enterprise and make people employable. I believe that Martin Schulz is right that we must be wary of ending up a Europe in which we compete on the basis of poor terms. We are having this discussion in Sweden, and it is also taking place around Europe. Having low or no pay is not a good starting point from which to try to face the competition; rather, it is only with good conditions that we can face the competition of the future.
Allow me to mention some other things that I believe are very important for steering Europe through the crisis. I have seen how the Commission – and I myself think this is important – has managed to defend the principle of the internal market at a time when many are attempting to compromise it and bring in protectionism. It is very easy to listen to those who are saying ‘Why did you not save the jobs in this particular country?’ without seeing the consequences of this if everyone acted in this way. If we did, we would basically extinguish free trade and the opportunity for cross-border trade. That which has basically created wealth and prosperity would very quickly be lost had we not resisted the call for protectionism. I believe that safeguarding the internal market and free movement is an important starting point for securing jobs.
I also have great faith in other things mentioned by some of you, such as investing in human skills and ensuring mobility in the labour market. I believe, for example, that one way to manage this is precisely this free movement – including across borders.
Just as Martin Schultz, Rebecca Harms and Joseph Daul mentioned, I believe that this is also an opportunity to combat this with a green trend, to bring about the low emission economies that we are talking about all over the world as another way of getting out of the crisis. How we manage financing and how we invest are important. I also want to say – I agree with Guy Verhofstadt on this point – that the Swedish experience of crisis management in the 1990s was that it can only be done by keeping a grip on public finances. I have learnt that when deficits are large and rationalisation is called for, it is people with small margins and those that are most dependent on welfare institutions who are left behind. Consequently, a policy that is prudent with public finances is a good policy for people who are poor or living on small margins.
Where the climate issue is concerned – which will be the main issue we work on ahead of the Copenhagen summit – I want to say that it is true that there is still a lot to do. Time is short.
I want to tell Rebecca Harms that it is unusual for us in Sweden to be criticised for our aid commitments. The average spent in Europe on such commitments is 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product. Sweden is fairly unique in that one per cent of our gross domestic product goes to development aid. For me, these matters are related. We carried out our own review under the leadership of our aid minister within the framework of the UN’s initiatives. During this we analysed precisely how we need to bear climate change in mind in our development work. You cannot carry on development work without at the same time looking at climate change and how it is already affecting poor parts of the earth. Consequently, we cannot separate these issues and say that this is development policy and that is climate policy – rather they are related and have to work together.
Where the Treaty is concerned, I would like to say to Martin Schulz that my role is to ensure that there is effective European leadership in a difficult period. We must be able to give answers to the citizens who want to see us take action to combat the financial crisis and on climate issues. We are all politically active and know that in the political domain, when we are inward-looking and discuss names and leadership our citizens perceive this as us having turned our backs on them. We are looking inwards."@en1
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