Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-077-000"
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"Mr President, I am very pleased to be here today to discuss with the Members of the European Parliament the Commission’s 2012 Annual Growth Survey. I am responding to the three rapporteurs who spoke before me and I will start with the Gauzès report and take the Cornelissen and Berès reports afterwards.
There is no doubt that this is a difficult path. But if we show discipline and resolve and strong reform implementation, we will be able to turn around the potential negative spiral and work to propel ourselves forward and pull ourselves up. This is the path that the Annual Growth Survey has charted for the 2012 European Semester.
Let me thank the European Parliament once more for showing the resolve Europe needs in the role it has played so far in strengthening the Union’s economic governance.
Let me turn to the Cornelissen report – which I warmly welcome – concerning the employment and social aspects of the Annual Growth Survey for 2012. I agree with your analysis and the key message that it contains. Firstly, I strongly support your call to the European Council to integrate, in its policy guidance, messages on the need to increase ambition to achieve the EU 2020 objectives and to support sustainable job creation with investment and tax reform.
You stress that budgetary, growth and employment measures need to be taken together as they are all interdependent; I fully agree with that. The focus needs to be simultaneously on measures having short-term effect and on the ones advancing towards the right growth model in the medium term, which is smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The guidance on Member States’ employment and economic policies should reflect this balanced approach.
Secondly, I am pleased in particular to note your call for the European Council to tackle youth employment as a priority and for the Member States to develop comprehensive strategies for young people who are not in employment, education or training.
In December, as you know, the Commission adopted a youth opportunities initiative to prompt action in fighting youth unemployment. The initiative lays special emphasis on making greater use of the Structural Funds, an approach endorsed by the informal European Council meeting on 30 January.
Action teams will this month visit the eight Member States with the highest youth unemployment rates – namely Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovakia – to identify the necessary elements for youth employment plans. In particular, they will look at how to step up the use of the Structural Funds and especially the European Social Fund, but also how to make best use of other EU tools such as EURES. In my view, this working method can also be seen as an embryo of an excessive unemployment procedure that would deploy and coordinate the national- and EU-level instruments in a more effective way.
Thirdly, I fully support your call to tackle poverty and social exclusion by laying the emphasis on groups with no – or limited – links to the labour market.
The Annual Growth Survey also sends strong policy messages to the European Council to make social protection systems more effective and implement active inclusion strategies that entail labour market activation measures.
Lastly, I support your call for greater democratic legitimacy, accountability and ownership.
I am very pleased to see from the report by Mr Gauzès that there is considerable convergence of views between what the Commission has proposed in terms of key policy priorities for 2012 and the thinking in this House. Such a broad convergence of views is an important signal, particularly in times of crisis. And, of course, the severe crisis of confidence that we are still facing is the background to the horizontal policy priorities that the Commission has proposed in this Annual Growth Survey.
Ownership of Europe 2020 in the context of the new governance is crucial for consensus, and consensus is critical to the strategy’s success. That is why Parliament needs to make its voice heard in the process. I therefore appreciate the effort the House has made to adopt these reports in time to contribute to the discussion ahead of the Spring European Council.
I would now turn to the Berès report and thank Ms Berès. I welcome your decision to approve the Commission proposal to carry over the guidelines for the Member States’ employment policies – being a core element of the European employment strategy – and leave them unchanged for 2012. The present employment guidelines meet their purpose in today’s very difficult economic environment. They are broad and comprehensive enough to cover the priorities identified in this year’s Annual Growth Survey and, in particular, the need for growth-enhancing reforms and job-rich recovery. They also provide the policy framework needed to address some of the social consequences of the economic crisis.
The Commission believes that the emphasis must now be on implementing the employment guidelines and pushing ahead with the growth-enhancing reforms they advocate. They provide the overall policy framework for any country-specific recommendation from the Council to the Member States under Article 148 of the Treaty.
At the heart of this crisis of confidence lies the potential negative feedback loop between financial sector vulnerabilities, shaky confidence in sovereign debt sustainability, and weak growth prospects. Continued fiscal consolidation will be important. However, without stronger growth prospects, it will be much more difficult to put public debt on a sustainable path. Growth-friendly consolidation and employment-friendly growth are therefore essential elements of our crisis response, which will be important for the guidance of Member States’ economic and employment policies, to be issued on 1 March.
To achieve all this, the Commission and the European Union are pursuing a number of avenues that together form a comprehensive strategy. It includes a solid solution for Greece, strengthening the financial sector, effective financial backstops, and stronger economic governance.
On all these elements, we have made considerable progress in recent months. In the area of economic governance, the role this House has played has been particularly significant. Strengthening growth prospects has become ever more crucial for breaking the vicious circle that threatens macro-financial stability and the recovery at the same time. This is one of the key messages of the 2012 Annual Growth Survey. It has therefore set out the five priorities that you know and which your draft report endorses.
The AGS has set out in concrete terms how the Single Market, the EU budget and specific EU initiatives, including project bonds, can contribute to bolstering our growth potential. Wherever accelerated treatment of legislative proposals is involved, we certainly count on the support of the European Parliament.
Let me just mention the proposed unitary EU patent, agreement on the revision of the Roaming Regulation, the pending revisions of the directives on annual accounts, and increasing cofinancing rates for programme countries. These and other pending initiatives would certainly go a long way in boosting growth. As stated clearly in the AGS, the Commission considers that mobilising employment for growth, employment of young people and protecting the vulnerable are key priorities. Our recent initiatives on youth unemployment and SME financing are fully in line with these priorities.
While structural reforms achieve their ultimate objective only over the medium to long term, a firm and committed implementation certainly sends out a strong signal to the market and contributes to building confidence already today. There is an urgent need for full implementation of the measures already launched during the first European Semester. I am glad that the European Parliament supports this message from the Commission. This is crucial.
Strong implementation of structural reforms is all the more important today as the scope for macro-economic stimulus, in particular fiscal stimulus, is very limited at this point in time. That is the reason why differentiated and growth-friendly fiscal consolidation and employment-friendly growth are at the core of our strategy."@en1
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