Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-24-Speech-3-041"
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"en.20100224.13.3-041"2
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"Mr President, in times of need, you discover who your friends are, as the saying goes. There are 27 governments in the European Union trying – each in its own way – to rescue their own banks and large-scale industries. This has so far resulted in more debt for each individual country and catastrophic savings rates for citizens. The euphemistic wage restraint policy, reducing non-wage labour costs and the privatisation of life risks such as age, family, sickness and desired education have all been mentioned.
The banks are now using the state rescue packages to speculate against the national budgets. The banks have already made more progress than the states. Hypo Real Estate and Commerzbank, which, in Germany, were rescued using billions of euros of taxpayers’ money, are right at the forefront when it comes to the business of excessively expensive government bonds in Greece. Taxpayers’ money is being used for speculation and this is money from normal, honest wage earners who do not have Swiss bank accounts like those to which the richer people are fleeing.
Believe me, I find no pleasure in using negative examples from Germany. However, one governing party in Germany is constantly calling for tax relief, while at the same time, the Greek Government is being called on to increase taxes. Who will have to find this money, though? I fear that it will primarily be those who are already finding it hard to make ends meet. Was it not Germany, formerly the world’s highest exporter, that years ago separated wage increases from productivity, thus resulting in social dumping?
In ancient Greek theatre, a crisis means an opportunity – yes, the challenge of a turning point. In order to bring about such a turning point, we must demand that a statutory minimum wage finally be put in place. The same work in the same place must receive the same wage. We need harmonisation of tax types within the Union, but above all, we need genuine European regulation and control of the financial markets and a real European economic and finance policy, coordinated on the basis of solidarity, with binding social and environmental targets."@en1
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