Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-01-Speech-3-121"
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"en.20000301.8.3-121"2
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"The report of the Commission presents an assessment of the current economic position of the European economy which it finds promising, especially in terms of the recent recovery of economic growth expected to lead to a reduction of unemployment to 8% by the year 2001. This picture in the opinion of your rapporteur has to be set against a background of sluggishness, of growth of only 1.9% per year throughout the 1990s, despite instances of higher growth rates during that decade which we were, however, unable to consolidate.
It would follow that if we do not wish the same old failures of the past to reassert themselves, we must use the current window of opportunity of improved economic performance in order to launch a new policy of transition into self-sustained higher growth levels in our economy. This is the challenge.
Faced with this challenge the Commission recommended essentially that our economic policy merely should prolong our past stance which limits itself to setting right the monetary and fiscal fundamentals of the economy while for the rest putting faith in the markets to work their miracle without any further intervention by conscious social agents.
In Europe, in your rapporteur’s opinion, this is exactly the attitude that has served us badly over past years, not just once but repeatedly. Such an attitude has downside risks which I understand the ECOFIN Council is currently discussing. These risks involve a correction in the US economy and the future trend in oil prices and in long-term EU interest rates. Should any of these risks materialise in a negative fashion, what will be our response – more
or shall we have prepared ourselves better than in the last downturn?
It has been my proposal that Parliament must recommend an activist economic policy consisting of two main parts. One is to adopt the Commission’s own excellent, outstanding econometric analysis, and ask the Council to transform it into a programme of action involving certain interconnected quantifiable targets of levels of investment growth and employment that would make our commitment to a policy of full employment operational and credible.
A central plank of such a programme should be the raising of the level of investment of capital formation from 19%, to which it has fallen over the decade, to at least 23-24% of GDP, both in the private and in the public sector. To allow the public sector to take the necessary significant lead in investment policy, the Council would indeed have to sacrifice some of its most sacred cows. It would need to revise its negative attitude towards the big infrastructure programmes of trans-European networks, which have been gathering dust in the drawers for rather too long, to allow them to be financed on an adequate scale by means of European Community bonds and to accept an interpretation of the concept of budget deficits which would allow governments to borrow for purposes of investment without falling foul of the restrictions of the stability pact. This was the first pillar of my recommendation.
The second pillar consisted of embracing a large number of structural reforms, privatisation, de-regulation proposals, as well as suggestions facilitating the transition to a knowledge-based economy which, as we know, constitutes the backbone of the proposals of the presidency for the Lisbon Summit. It has been repeatedly stated by expert opinion that the programme of structural reforms combined with an expansionary programme of investment and growth is capable of pulling the European economy out of its state of inertia while one-sided policies are condemned to fail.
Unfortunately my colleagues of the People’s Party aided and abetted by the Liberals in the Economic Affairs Committee found my approach unacceptable. I am glad that at least after five years of insistence they have found the target of full employment acceptable but I must say that simply referring to full employment without proposing a concrete programme towards achieving the targets smacks too much of lip service and is too unconvincing to serve as the political message of optimism that people expect from us, have been expecting from us rather too long. It is certainly not my task to judge other people’s alliances but if the People’s Party and the Liberals are so desperate to cement their alliance, let them at least propose something positive, something that has a chance of working, not repeat the same tired old platitudes, ideas that have so singularly failed us in the past, nor oppose other people’s concrete efforts just for the sake of opposing them.
I believe that the political message of this Parliament should consist of something more original than a mere rehash of the neo-classical economic mantra. Something more robust than a call to surrender to the fatalities of the market economy, something more decent than opposing dutiful aims but denying them the means of their realisation. The report which has come to you from the Economic Committee sins in all these respects. Unless it is restored in its original form by Parliament, accepting the amendments retabled by the Socialist Group, I must take the unusual but inevitable course of asking my Socialist colleagues and indeed anybody who believes that Parliament should speak a meaningful language to vote against the report that bears my name but that is no longer mine either in thinking or in conscience."@en1
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