Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-076-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20110323.17.3-076-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, economic and monetary union without effective coordination of economic policy will not work. The Stability and Growth Pact has failed – on this many experts across party-political boundaries are agreed. The problem is that politics does not seem to have made much progress. In fact, no new political concepts are in sight.
Let me remind you that the stability pact’s 3% limit has been breached 73 times since 1999, 46 times in a way that is barely tolerable under the Treaty – yet in not one single case has a penalty been imposed. This non-functioning pact does not need to be revised; it simply needs to be implemented more – or rather, it needs to be implemented in the first place.
Naturally, every householder and every entrepreneur knows how important it is to have sustainable budgets. However, I fear that in the forthcoming decisions on economic governance and on the European Stability Mechanism it will be all about cuts. That is not the same as a sustainable budget. No state that is in so much debt as to be on the brink of insolvency can get out of the debt trap if it has to continue to finance this debt by borrowing at high interest rates. However much it saves, its debt will continue to rise – all the more so if wages, unemployment benefit and pensions have to be reduced, working hours extended, and public investment in infrastructure, education, health and so on cut back. If there is no consumption, then production will also collapse. Neither tightening up the Stability and Growth Pact nor the so-called strict conditionality of the future stability mechanism will therefore lead us to our goal.
What should be emphasised more clearly in the overall package of measures is the additional need for investment in crisis-hit countries in particular, and this must go beyond small extensions of credit and slight reductions in interest rates. The mention of the necessity of reducing macro-economic imbalances will be problematic for so long as it is only demanded of economically weak states, while those that are economically strong are allowed to continue as before. Not only does the key word ‘solidarity’ not appear anywhere, but it has also been forgotten that expenditure and trade deficits on one side are income and trade surpluses on the other."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples