Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-075-000"
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"en.20110323.17.3-075-000"2
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"Madam President, Mr Barroso has left already but as he said, confidence is the basis of everything.
Lastly, as regards the finance industry, new stress tests will not create greater security, any more than they will in the nuclear industry, if I may be so bold. We have seen how useless the previous stress tests were. Everything was fine supposedly, even in Ireland. What we need are new binding rules, but not rules that we are told will be implemented on 1 January 2019. It is high time that the demon of the finance industry with its predatory activities was put back in its bottle, and our citizens will not put up with us waiting any longer.
This is the price to be paid for our fellow citizens’ confidence, and it is vital that as Europeans we have that confidence so that we can return to the 21st century with optimism and with our heads held high.
I can tell you that our citizens’ confidence is evaporating as fast as the water in the tanks at the Fukushima power plant. Yes, our citizens know that certain things need to change and that we cannot continue as before. Yes, we need to halt the race towards insecurity and greater inequality. Yes, we need to break our addiction to fossil-based energy and hazardous energy. Yes, we need to return to a situation where finance is there to serve the economy and the economy is there to serve citizens; and no, we can no longer build our economies on debt, be it public or private, on deficit and on speculation.
Our fellow citizens know all this. They also know that this will require profound and radical change on the part of governments, businesses and themselves. They know this and they sense it.
They know that these radical changes are also complex. As Marianne Thyssen said to me yesterday, they are complex and we cannot do everything at once. We need to start somewhere.
However, the trouble is that from our fellow citizens’ point of view we always start in the same place: we always start by cutting public expenditure, which as we all know most benefits the more vulnerable. We always start by making the labour markets more flexible. Indeed, when people talk about rebalancing flexibility and security, we know full well that this means more flexibility and less security.
Our citizens are fed up with the double standards behind this policy. At the end of the day, it leaves those who have profited most from the casino economy of the last 20 years in peace.
What we want from the Council, therefore – in addition to everything that is on the table today of course – is a bold initiative designed to provide Member States and the European Union with stable, fair tax revenue. This means the financial transaction tax of course, plus energy taxes and business tax – and please do not try to sell us the common tax base as the be-all and end-all or the ultimate fiscal policy – and lastly, it means combating fraud and tax havens.
Without such an initiative, I promise you that everything to do with economic governance that is on the table will collapse and take the euro with it. There is no historical example, ladies and gentlemen, of a monetary union that has succeeded without robust fiscal union to support it.
No more impact assessments, no more prevarication, no more national egoism: for goodness’ sake act!"@en1
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