Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-24-Speech-3-030"
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"en.20100324.12.3-030"2
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"Mr President, I would like to remind everyone briefly once again of how quickly – sometimes practically overnight – we decided to bail out Europe’s banks when they were in trouble.
Yet it is only now that we are debating the terms on which this assistance is being granted. We still have not clarified the terms of the repayments and responsibilities, nor have we set out how the banks will be supervised. Bearing this in mind, I must also point out that this Greek crisis – this crisis facing the euro – is actually a European crisis and that discussions have been going on for weeks and months without Europeans being able to garner themselves to make the necessary decisions; as far as I am concerned, it is simply shameful. As a German MEP – I hope you are listening, Mr Langen – I am ashamed of my national government.
We read today that a special summit is taking place in Brussels at which decisions will be made on Greece according to Chancellor Merkel’s will – what she wants and what will enable her to return to Berlin from Brussels as the victor – without actually discussing satisfactory solutions with the others. I think it is disgraceful. It means that the tabloids and armchair politics have won, and I believe we should think very carefully – you too, Mr Langen, in your German delegation – as to whether the ‘to be or not to be’ of solidarity in the European Union should hinge on the results of opinion polls currently being obtained by a German party of which the German Chancellor is a member relating to the prospects of electoral success in a Federal German state.
I think it smacks far too much of populism, and it is intolerable that it has not yet been established that the Heads of State or Government will agree during the regular Thursday and Friday Council sessions on how the euro area is to deal with the crisis in Greece.
I have been following the discussions in Germany carefully and last week I was also in Greece, and I would like to make it clear once more to the citizens of my own country, of Greece and of the EU, that this is a time for solidarity; but that henceforth, Greece will only be able to obtain credit on favourable terms if this is not a one-way street. The days I spent in Greece showed me that the people of Greece now have an opportunity to create a better state. The state of Greece must utilise the crisis to bring about real reforms. We will be doing no one any favours if we now show solidarity without calling on Mr Papandreou to make even more far-reaching reforms than have been announced to date. As I have said, the Greek people deserve much better.
Since I find this populism so prevalent in Germany and because I consider it so dangerous, I would also like to argue this from another perspective: in our analysis, the continued existence of the euro – of a single currency – in the long term can only be secured if Europeans pull together and integrate their economic policy. Otherwise, competition for so-called hard interests will, in cases of doubt, always lead us into the difficulties that we are currently facing. We will then have a lot to do, and once again things will turn bitter, Mr Langen. We need to explain the necessity of integration to our citizens.
We have made as heavy weather of this as when discussing the constitution. We are so pleased that the Treaty of Lisbon is finally in force, yet when faced with our first challenge after Lisbon, we let the tabloid press and armchair politics win out over reason. Chancellor Merkel would be well advised – and that means also by you, my fellow Germans in the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) – to apply the brakes. The necessity of integrating economic policy is what needs to be discussed henceforth. We must be led by transparency, reason and arguments that we can put to our citizens, not by the tabloid press such as
. Otherwise, as Mr Münchau wrote today, before long, Chancellor Merkel will be returning defeated from Brussels. Then
will write: the euro must be abolished – we must bring back the Deutsche mark. What will we do then?
It is not yet too late. Germany is in a decisive position. I hope that Mr Sarkozy will not give in and is instead more sensible than Chancellor Merkel."@en1
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"BILD-Zeitung"1
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