Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-094-000"
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"en.20110323.17.3-094-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow, 24 March, will be a symbolic day. In the first instance, it will be marked by the amendment to the Treaty of Lisbon that we have just voted for, which will allow a permanent European Stability Mechanism to be established. This mechanism allows the European Union to devise the first Eurobonds, which are designed to finance sovereign debt at low interest rates in the event of speculative attacks.
In this respect, it is a shame that the process stopped halfway. To deal with the markets’ irrational exuberance, the revision of the Treaty ought to have been an opportunity to authorise the European Central Bank to do what the United States does and buy back public debt in the event of exchange rate tensions. The process is even more incomplete since the pay-off required is to implement the Competitiveness Pact, re-christened the Pact for the euro. This is the second symbol of tomorrow. This pact is backed unanimously by the Council, the Commission and the European Central Bank.
Ladies and gentlemen, you all know the Washington Consensus: you loved it. Well, 24 March sees the birth of the ‘Brussels consensus’. The ‘Brussels consensus’ is the blind, roughshod application of neoliberal dogma: squeezing public services and the welfare state; wage austerity and minimal regulation of the financial markets.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Council, the Commission and the ECB have short memories. They are proposing to transpose the Pact for the euro into the governance package so as to enshrine in our system the very policies that led to the economic crisis. In Spain, the UK, Ireland and elsewhere, the rise of household debt, which is fed by the finance industry, has been caused by none other than the crisis in buying power resulting from the pay restraint that has held sway for 20 years. The Pact for the euro unfortunately proposes to make wage austerity a permanent fixture.
As for public debt, as well as being a consequence of the economic crisis, it is also a result of pointless tax reductions everywhere, advocated by liberals and conservatives. There was no explosion of public expenditure in Europe: quite the contrary. Budget and wage austerity, combined with the interest rate rises already planned by the European Central Bank, will end up killing off internal demand in Europe and killing off the recovery without reducing deficits. Tomorrow, we will be side by side with employees demonstrating against this ‘Brussels consensus’: this is the third symbol of 24 March. If we do not want to see a return of the likes of the brown shirts, whom Europe was created to stand against, the people’s elected representatives must stand with the people to denounce policies that are as unjust as they are ineffective."@en1
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