Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-25-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20100325.3.4-020"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make use of this opportunity to take another look at the situation in Greece, because I believe that the crisis in Greece gives us an insight into the political status of the euro area. Firstly, however, I would like to make a remark about the calls from the German Chancellor, Mrs Merkel, to exclude Greece from the euro area, if necessary.
My group, the Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left, believes that this proposal is absolutely absurd. On the one hand, we are talking about a community with a common destiny. If we mean this seriously, then we cannot call, on the other hand, for a Member State to be excluded during the first large or moderate crisis that we have encountered. That is preposterous! Most importantly, this would be an admission of failure which would amount to kowtowing to the financial sector.
The financial sector has shamelessly allowed itself to be bought out of the crisis by taxpayers, but we are now being asked to deny help of this kind to Greece. It will be difficult to explain to the pensioners and the workers in Greece and also in the other countries affected – according to the media, Portugal is the next country to come under scrutiny – why they are now being asked to pay up, having already supported the banks with their taxes. Taking this route would be the equivalent of driving the EU project into a wall.
Despite all the justified criticism of Greece – and the Greek Members will realise that there is much to be done in their country – the crisis is by no means solely the responsibility of Greece. I would just like to point out that the majority of decisions on financial policy in the euro area have been handed over to the European Central Bank. The euro cannot provide the answer to the different levels of productivity in the individual economies. Major exporters such as Germany are forcing Greek economic policy to its knees. Therefore, this also represents a crisis in EU economic and competition policy.
This is why we are calling for the ban on financial assistance for EU Member States to be lifted. The Member States in the euro area should make euro loans available, the European Central Bank should buy up debts in the same way that the Federal Service in the USA has done and credit default swaps should be banned. This is what we are calling for."@en1
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