Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-15-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20101215.5.3-014"2
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"Mr President, I share the hope that measures will be agreed at the European Council to reassure the markets and reintroduce stability to the eurozone, because, whether we are members or not, we should all have an interest in that.
Ahead of the meeting we are told that more sanctions are to be a central part of the solution, but sanctions need to be credible to be effective and the track record of the Union in this regard is pretty bad. Making them automatic will hardly make them more credible if the belief remains that a political solution might be found to avoid them. What is really required is for eurozone members to have the political will to deliver on their current obligations.
We hear rumours that a key part of the solution is to make the private sector share the burden of future bail-outs. It would however be a terrible paradox if the main consequence of such an initiative would be to raise borrowing costs for some of the weaker eurozone Member States and contribute to the next crisis.
Having just finished a major reform treaty process, a reform package, we are told, would close the book on treaty change for a generation. We are now, just a matter of months later, apparently to embark on another.
We are reassuringly told, including by the Commission President, that the changes need only be limited, but that does not appear to be what the German Government believes. The German finance minister, Dr Schäuble seems to have opened the door to a new round of integration leading to a fiscal union and, ultimately, a political union.
Where is this going to end? Surely not another lost decade focusing on the wrong kind of reforms? Europe needs economic reform, public finance discipline, deepening the internal market, changes to labour laws to boost employment, and a package of measures to make a success of the Europe 2020 programme.
These are the key reforms, boldly and rightly set out by President Barroso in the programme for his Commission, but already I fear this opportunity may be slipping from our grasp. The terrible risk is that, despite the talk about building Europe, it may in fact be undermined, and while hoping for a stronger Europe, the failure to address its underlying economic problems will in fact just make it weaker.
We believe the priorities of the European Council must be to agree a limited number of specific measures, so that eurozone members can help each other through the immediate crisis without imposing any burdens on Member States who have chosen to remain outside, and then to reassert the vital importance of dealing with the long-term crisis which we face: the risk of a permanent collapse in our economic competiveness."@en1
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