Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-072-000"
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"en.20120215.5.3-072-000"2
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"Mr President, if there is one lesson that we could learn from the past few years, it is that our economies are totally intertwined. Yes, we do need to coordinate. Yes, we should let the Commission look over our shoulders. This coordination adds necessary powers at the European level but, unfortunately, without adding necessary democracy at the European level too.
We as a Parliament do not accept such a limited role. With my report and the report of Mr Gauzès, we are presenting Parliament’s view on what is currently most needed. Although the Council is not legally obliged to take account of it, I feel that it most certainly is morally and democratically obliged to do so. Parliament’s main message to the Council is this: we need far more coherence between fiscal and budgetary policies, on the one hand, and social and employment policies, on the other hand. It is a tremendous mistake to ignore the social consequences of badly-aimed austerity policies or to forget that a currency is there to serve the people, not the other way round.
I really hope that, at the Spring Council, one government leader will stand up and say:
Dear colleagues, just hold on a minute. Do you remember we had a meeting about two years ago where we set our goals for 2020 and, among other things, planned to increase labour participation, lift millions out of poverty and invest heavily in innovation? I am getting quite worried that, if we go on like this, we will not attain any of these goals.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if we all cut social benefits to get under the deficit ceiling, will that not actually push rather a lot of people into poverty instead of lifting millions out? If we cut down on things like labour activation measures and child care, will that not really mean that labour participation will diminish instead of grow and that rising unemployment will, in turn, increase our budget deficits?
Furthermore, of course my calculator could be at fault, but is it not the case that if countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal are not given any hope for recovery, their debt will rise even as they are paying it off, because it is a percentage of their GDP and not actually a flat figure?
Perhaps what we should be doing is discussing how we can cut wisely in some areas and also invest in others. Perhaps we should look further to the future and prepare ourselves for an ageing society by investing in education, innovation and youth employment. Perhaps we should make our EU 2020 goals binding: as binding as the budgetary ones.
I know that I am probably complicating things quite a bit by pointing this out, but as I was reading the European Parliament’s contribution to our discussion I thought, by golly, they are absolutely right’.
Well, any government leader who is courageous enough to point out the pain is very welcome to borrow that speech, and I am very sure that tomorrow’s vote will show that any such courageous leader would have the full backing of the European Parliament."@en1
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