Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-08-Speech-2-477-000"
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"en.20110308.25.2-477-000"2
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"Madam President, Mr Barroso, ladies and gentlemen, what lessons have we learnt from the financial crisis?
The second lesson is this: European solidarity can only operate if, and only if, our social and fiscal regulations are at least comparable. They do not necessarily need to be identical – just comparable. At the moment, this is far from being the case.
The third lesson is that Europe must provide itself with a European stability mechanism to protect our social market economy.
The fourth and final lesson is that even in a storm, Europe is standing firm and European integration is becoming stronger.
Our American and Japanese partners have debt ratios far in excess of ours, without, it must be said, being excessively worried by it. However, that will probably not always be the case. For our part, now is the time to consolidate our economy and our competitiveness. Now is the time to work on creating jobs for the future. Now is the time to tell things as they are. Let us not miss this opportunity!
The lesson we learnt from the Second World War was that our nations should work together and stop tearing each other apart.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall, we learnt lessons about authoritarian and communist regimes and we were able to reunite our continent around the values of freedom, democracy and the social market economy.
From the terrorist attack of 11 September, we learnt that we had to strike a new balance between security and freedom.
From this financial crisis, the lesson we must learn is for our Member States to stop treating as a taboo subject any cooperation in the budgetary, fiscal and social fields. I know exactly how far we have come. The establishment, this year, of cooperation between the 27 on their budgetary priorities constitutes, in itself, a major shift in attitude. The regulations that we have provided ourselves with to make the financial markets more ethical are, also, exemplary, but they do not suffice.
My group would like to call for an agreement to be reached between Parliament and the Council, before the summer, on strengthened economic governance. My group would also like to call for efforts to be pursued on the coordination of social and fiscal matters. That is the thrust of the competitiveness pact, the initial version of which has already been revised to be in greater accordance with Community values. However, we must go even further still and ensure that both Parliament and the Commission exercise all the prerogatives that they enjoy in this respect, and in this, we are counting on the President of the Commission.
The Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) welcomes and supports these proposals as did the national leaders of the party in Helsinki.
Ladies and gentlemen, how can we explain to our fellow citizens that, at the same time as we are in a delicate financial situation in mid-July each year, most of our Member States should continue to spend as if nothing were amiss? How can it be that the over-indebtedness of our States is more acceptable, more tolerable and more bearable than that of households or businesses? I have witnessed this at company level. The crisis has led to job losses and family trauma; the least we can do is to learn lessons from this and tell things as they are.
The first lesson is that we should no longer treat lightly the obligations placed on States – whatever their size – to respect budget limits."@en1
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