Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-04-18-Speech-3-358-000"
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"en.20120418.21.3-358-000"2
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"Mr President, although Mr Draghi has declined to attend, I would like to reiterate that I think it would have been very good to have him here. I thought it was a very good idea of the Conference of Presidents, because I think it is high time we had a direct face-to-face discussion between us here concerning whether the strategies of the European Central Bank are consistent and proportionate with the common European crisis strategy.
In recent years, we have praised the ECB on several occasions for having saved by its measures not just the euro, but in some situations, probably the entire European Union, from a worse fate. However, have we actually dealt carefully enough, in political terms, with the actions taken by the European Central Bank? Has the Council used the time bought well? Thousands of billions of euro have flowed into European banks under Mr Draghi. What was supposed to be done with this money? This money was supposed to be used for the real economy, and it was supposed to be used to buy up government bonds in the crisis-hit countries. My findings suggest that only a small part of it has been used for this. Why is that? My findings suggest that the time bought by the ECB to enable us to make better policies in Europe has not only elapsed without being utilised, but has actually been used counterproductively. All the palaver over the European fiscal pact, which was played out splendidly all over again at the last summit, has meant that we have not utilised the time bought properly – time that cost thousands of billions of euro.
The dramatic reports from Southern Europe – and we are no longer talking only about little Greece and Portugal, but now we are also talking about large countries, large economies such as Spain and Italy – make me think that what we are hearing from there suggests we cannot afford to go down this single-minded, fanatical road of austerity any further. I welcome the programme that is now being put forward by you and Commissioner Andor, but before I give you any further praise for it, I must reiterate that some of the demands that we have repeated like a mantra over the past year have not yet been dealt with. In this respect, I share Mr Verhofstadt’s opinion that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) must be expanded. We do not have sufficient funding in the ESM. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), or even the ESM, needs a banking licence. We need to be able to intervene differently in the markets, and we cannot allow ourselves to continue along this path of austerity. If government debt is not the sole cause of the crisis, then austerity alone cannot be the solution.
Regarding the programme that you have presented today, I would like to say that we have long been convinced that we need to conduct anti-recession policies, that we need to stimulate lasting growth. Whether you will manage to do it – that I do not know, Mr Barroso. I no longer know what the European Commission is capable of here. I would be very interested to know, for example, what timetable you are actually following right now – so that, on behalf of my group, I can judge whether anything will actually be done in time in Greece, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal and in other crisis-hit countries."@en1
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