Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-12-Speech-3-039-000"

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"Mr President, the President of the Commission’s speech has made it quite plain that a clear picture is emerging in the European Union: there are the Community institutions whose convictions largely coincide. I can only say that what Mr Barroso has proposed and presented to us – repeatedly – reflects the will of the overwhelming majority of this House. In other words, the Community institutions are moving closer together. That certainly cannot be said of the other side – the side of the government institutions, that is to say, the Council and the European Council, because it is not the case, Mr Daul, that we need solutions by Christmas; we need solutions now. The situation in the European Union is namely so dramatic that we need to do two things at the same time: we need to keep in view the stability of the economic situation in the States of the European Union that are at risk and in those that are still stable, and we must also understand that the Treaty of Lisbon cannot be the end of the road of European integration, but that it is an intermediate step and that we need further communitisation of policy areas, because otherwise we will create another serious democratic deficit. However, it is absolutely clear that if we leave the decisions on our currency, economic and financial policy, budget policy and fiscal policy in general exclusively to this permanent Vienna Congress, which in this case calls itself the European Council, where those holding power in Europe will travel to Brussels and meet behind closed doors only to then tell the astonished population what they have once again failed to achieve – that cannot be an efficient way for Europe to operate and for it to gain the confidence of the markets and the citizens. This dismembered Europe, where each Head of State or Government is maintaining the tactical equivocations of its national parliamentarians, this Europe will not strengthen the euro. Therefore, we need communitisation. When you cite Article 136 here with the Commission and the Council, Mr President, we as Parliament always want to be involved in future. Whatever executive action is to be carried out in Europe, Parliament wants to be involved. For this reason alone, we need to amend the Treaties. ‘The people are losing faith in their governments’ – that is the headline in the today. The governments are confusing the people. It was your fellow party member, Jean-Claude Juncker, who said that, and he is right. Every day there is another idea, but no solutions. Now we have to recapitalise the banks. We also had to recapitalise the banks three years ago. We said then: ‘but in a controlled way and with unbundling’ – as is now the case with regard to Dexia – investment banking and traditional banking must be unbundled. Nothing has happened in three years! We debated the issue of capital reserves on risk capital balance sheets – nothing has happened. We are in a situation where we have to recapitalise the banks once again three years after the most severe banking crisis, without the necessary regulations having been established in the meantime. This is a situation in which the people really are losing faith, because Mr President, Mr Barroso, Mr Dowgielewicz, ladies and gentlemen, one thing is absolutely clear: banks are too big to allow them to fail, and individual States are not important enough to save them! That is the reality of the European Union. Ordinary citizens and their state are unimportant; corporate enterprises are everything! I will quote you the words of one expert: ‘The reason why people are losing faith in their governments is that they take money from taxpayers and give it to the banks, and the shareholders profit from it. If taxpayers are the ones paying, then they are also shareholders, if you please! The banks have to give a proportion of their profits to the national budget. That is my old fashioned view of the matter’. – said Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg. The President of the Commission says: ‘We need the financial transaction tax’. Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy are not managing to bring that about. Therefore, we cannot wait until Christmas; we must act now. I therefore want to make it very clear: we hope that, on 23 October in the Council, you will also show the courage that you have now shown twice before this House, and then I would have liked you to come back and give us a report. However, I have heard that you will be in China at the EU-China Summit and so cannot come. Mr Van Rompuy will also fly out there with you and so cannot come either. I assume that Mr Tusk will not be able to come either. I do not know what all three of you will tell the Chinese, perhaps it is always the same thing – everything has already been said, just not by everyone. Perhaps you can tell Mr Van Rompuy that he can come, because it should suffice for Mr Tusk and Mr Barroso to be there. It would therefore be important, after such an important summit, for the President of the Council to make a statement before the European Parliament so that we will at least know whether the Heads of State or Government are doing their job. We are doing ours, you are doing yours – the Council must now do its job."@en1
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