Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-01-Speech-3-024-000"
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"en.20120201.12.3-024-000"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, after the Summit I read in the newspapers that some people had described the Summit and the Fiscal Compact Treaty as a masterpiece. However, when I look at what really happened, my evaluation of it is completely different.
What did happen? We have a Treaty which is still being drafted and we will have to wait and see where it ends up. This is a Treaty which aims to ensure that existing European Union Treaties are complied with, but is positioned outside those Treaties. This new Treaty which lies outside the other treaties has succeeded in completely marginalising democracy.
If that is a masterpiece, ladies and gentlemen, I do not know whether I can still take Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso seriously. I believe that you are much wiser in political terms than the speeches that you have given today about this most recent informal summit and its results might indicate. I would like to say to you that I think this whole thing is a political charade. I do not believe that the citizens of Europe will be very happy about this. I believe that the citizens are increasingly realising that the charade which took place during the Summit is intended to deceive them.
What is the biggest problem? In my opinion, the biggest difficulty is the analysis that lies behind the Fiscal Compact Treaty which cites public debt as being the major problem in the crisis. However hard I try to understand this interpretation of the crisis, I cannot come to the same conclusion. Nevertheless, the fact that we are still only arguing about the restructuring of public budgets has been making the crisis worse over a period of years. Therefore, the subject that should really have been debated is the programme to combat recession in the countries which are in crisis. Where is it? You have been talking today once again about jobs and growth, but, as far as I can see, only passing mention was made of this whole subject at the Summit. I am still able to read and do sums. Where is the money to back up the announcements and promises that you have made, which are sheer invention? I do not know where it is.
Ladies and gentlemen, if we take a look at Greece and at Portugal, we must all be aware of the risk of infection. What does Greece need now? An austerity commissioner? Another instrument of torture, thought up by European technocrats who have already put in place a technical government, with a financial expert at its head, and now an austerity commissioner? In my opinion, what the Greeks need is an honest analysis at last and an honest commitment to a better future. A programme to combat recession is urgently required. We know that the programmes in the areas of general infrastructure and energy infrastructure had already been completed and we could have introduced them. There were European companies who would have invested in Greece. We are talking about an austerity commissioner instead of discussing with the Greeks what the Greece of tomorrow will look like and instead of giving the Greeks some encouragement. I thought that it was a particularly low point when Greece was discussed as some sort of side issue. Mr Van Rompuy, this Summit made me feel ashamed.
I would like to make one final point. We need to have a private talk about how the countries which have not yet joined the euro are being treated. How can you justify this? I am definitely not Mr Tusk’s closest friend. His political background is quite different to mine. However, when it is all about Europe and about the big picture and not about the narrow-minded interests of those European countries which are still wealthy, when we need to look at the situation as a whole, I think we should take Mr Tusk as our model. The dispute with him about a seat at the children’s table was a low point of European politics. For me a masterpiece is something quite different."@en1
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