Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-080-000"
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"en.20120215.5.3-080-000"2
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"Mr President, in the first debate here this morning on the European Council meeting, a very dark picture was painted of a Europe that is blindly marching to the drumbeat of austerity and more austerity without any real hope or a convincing vision for the future.
As my colleague, Sylvie Goulard, said, we are trying to impose stability by force. Up to now, the buzz-word in the EU has been solidarity. Right now, solidarity means mutual self-interest, because a failure by any one country will have a massive and incalculable impact on all of us. So as we try to grapple with the unthinkable, sometimes it is easy to forget the day-to-day and to overlook the steps that we must take today and tomorrow to ensure that we achieve the targets set in the EU 2020 strategy.
This very good report by Ms Cornelissen provides us with a road map from the perspective of employment and social affairs. Indeed, these are words we do not hear often enough – employment and social affairs – because they are words that directly impact on the lives of citizens.
There are some matters in this report that may cause certain problems for members of this House, such as the financial transaction tax. I support the FTT, but it should be on a Europe-wide basis and, ideally, it should be global. Another issue which may cause concern and has been alluded to by many Members here this morning is the call for Member States with a current account surplus to contribute to a reduction in macro-economic imbalances by increasing internal demand. Part of the problem here is that we tend to be very black and white, and we tend to define deficit as bad and surplus as good. But the reality is they both cause imbalances, and while there is a difference, we cannot concentrate on one aspect only.
In the last debate, the Danish Presidency said that growth and employment were top priority; they also said that austerity is top priority. Again and again, that is the message we are getting, but this report helps to redress the balance.
Finally, this morning we heard many criticisms of the Troika. Paragraph 48 proposes a solution: that the ILO should be involved in the financial assistance programmes. I hope both the Council and the Commission will take that suggestion on board."@en1
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