Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-333"
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"en.20090324.28.2-333"2
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"Mr President, the G20 Summit in London will be a milestone in the global response to the global crisis. I am very confident that, under Prime Minister Brown’s leadership, it will be a success.
In London, the European Union must also give a strong message rejecting protectionism. We will defend our internal market at home, keeping it open, and we will work for open, global markets too. We must not give up on Doha and must reach an agreement soon. Nor can we forget the countries most in need: we must stick to our commitments on the Millennium Development Goals.
We must always bear in mind that the actions we take are only the means to an end, improving people’s well-being. These are measures not for the financial system – not for that particular segment of the economy – but for people. At the current juncture, this means we must cushion and mitigate the effects on employment of the economic downturn in the European Union. Indeed, employment is our first concern now. We will hold an Employment Summit on 7 May to mobilise ideas and actions in favour of keeping people in jobs and retraining them for the jobs of the future. We are working with social partners, because we believe that is also part of our model in Europe –the idea to work together with our social partners – and we believe that in this way we can help our workers to prepare them for the jobs of the future sustainable and low carbon economy that we want European to lead.
The meeting of the G20 in London will, therefore, have to deliver in quite a number of areas – a very ambitious programme. I am sure that, under the leadership of Gordon Brown and with a strong European contribution, the G20 will deliver and will build a global consensus on the international economy.
The initiative for a global response to a global crisis came from Europe. I recall that both President Sarkozy and I went to Camp David to propose to President Bush a global response. The G20 Summit in Washington in November 2008 was precisely the result of those joint efforts.
Europe has, therefore, a particular responsibility in the current G20 process. We want the London Summit to succeed, and I am sure it will succeed. Europe will be united in London and with a unified message. As agreed last week by the 27 Member States in the European Council, we will have a proactive agenda for London. We want concrete results on a stimulus for the world economy and on the regulation of all financial actors, from banks to hedge funds, to new rules on credit-rating agencies.
We should be clear that there is no dichotomy between stimulating the economy and improving regulation – we need both. Indeed, we need to go beyond that: we need also to reject all forms of economic nationalism and protectionism and we need to renew our commitments to the less-developed world, making sure that Europe will respect the Millennium Development Goals.
The economic slowdown is particularly severe. So providing a coordinated stimulus to the economy through supporting overall demand is necessary. The European Union is already doing a lot on this front: our overall fiscal effort, combining discretionary action and automatic stabilisers, is close to 4% of GDP.
Now we must implement our recovery plans vigorously. We know what we have to do: to get loans flowing again; to keep people in jobs; to improve their skills for when the upturn comes; to continue to invest in productivity and European competitiveness. The Commission will monitor and evaluate what Member States are doing to coordinate our overall response to the crisis.
On financial regulation, the European Union wants to move the frontier further: no financial product, no institution, no market, no jurisdiction should be exempt from regulation. But not regulation for the sake of regulating – we need further regulation because we need markets to function properly again, funding jobs and investments. Only in this way will confidence be restored, and confidence is key. Putting ethics back in the financial system is also a condition for the confidence we need in open economies.
In the European Union, the frontier is already moving: proposals on capital adequacy and credit-rating agencies have been presented by the Commission and are currently being discussed also by this Parliament. Over the coming weeks the Commission will table proposals on hedge funds, private equity and executive pay and, in time for the June European Council, the Commission will put forward a package for a new European supervisory system. The European Union is moving: we will say it loud and clear in London so that we can work together with our partners, namely our American friends.
We want the others to move along with us; we need global rules for a global economy. Take the case of impaired assets: clearly, without cleaning the banking system, credit will not flow back to the economy. The European Union now has a framework, provided by the Commission, to address this issue. G20 Finance Ministers discussed at length the treatment of impaired assets less than two weeks ago. The set of principles they adopted largely reflects European Union views on the matter. So, once again, we had the unique experience of setting supranational and transnational rules and show that the European Union is better prepared than anyone not to impose but to propose the rules for this globalisation."@en1
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