Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-03-Speech-3-317"
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"en.20011003.9.3-317"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Karas, I cannot resist commenting on your speech. In all instances where we already have sensible coordination of our economic policies in the European Union, we have chalked up enormous successes. Government budgets over the last year have for the first time in decades shown a surplus, and that still holds good, Mrs Peijs, if we exclude exceptional income from the sale of mobile telephone licences.
I do not think that we should play this down in today's debate. The success stories in the current year will not be so great. That is because growth in the European Union has slowed down, but that is no reason to start harping on about inflation. Nor is it any reason to start panicking. No one can calm down our friends in the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and the European Democrats. No one – not in this House anyway – wants to print money. No one wants to print money as a way of solving finance policy problems. We only want to print money to provide the public with our new currency, the euro, on time, but nobody here is talking about an inadequate budgetary policy.
However, you know that too. That is not what is at stake here! Essentially, it is about something quite different. You know very well that, in the past, these budget consolidation successes that I have been talking about were not achieved by increasing income but by cutting expenditure. Those expenditure cuts led to a positive result, but also had negative affects. In many areas, public infrastructure is in a state of decay. In many places social networks are under great pressure and our investment patterns both in the private sector and in the public sector have led to key strategic deficiencies in comparison with our competitors on the world scene.
We now find ourselves in a situation in which government receipts will decline for cyclical reasons. So the vital question is this: what should we do in that situation? Are you really seriously envisaging further global cuts in public sector income and expenditure? Do you really want to freeze budgets so that we fail to make the investment necessary for our future? Do you want the European Union to enter a further procyclical phase which will prevent us from benefiting from long-term growth overall?
I cannot imagine that that is what you want. Mr von Wogau asked me at lunchtime today what the Socialists really want. I can give him an answer: we want to stop these scare tactics! We want to put an end to talk that recovery in Europe is always just short-term, because if the central banks or governments are running scared, we will lose long-term opportunities. We have tabled amendments that we think are sensible. If you can agree to compromise with us, then we can find a common path. And if that is not possible, we will go our separate ways!"@en1
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