Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-13-Speech-2-019-000"
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"en.20111213.5.2-019-000"2
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"Mr President, I am going to speak in my native language, because, on this particular day, English does not seem to be the appropriate language to use. It took Belgium more than 540 days to form a government and everyone poked fun at us. However, the euro crisis has been going on for more than 700 days and we, here, need to have the honesty to recognise that we have still not got it under control and that the end is still not in sight.
I believe that we ought, above all, to underline the positive aspects of the recent summit, something which has yet to be done here. One of those is that we have finally abandoned and thrown out the accursed, disastrous Deauville deal. That, you will remember, was the casino compromise. The deal that was the spawn of President Sarkozy’s obsession and Prime Minister Merkel’s kiss of death. The obsession of Mr Sarkozy, who thought – and, I believe, still thinks – that
and the large euro area countries should be the ones running the show, not the European institutions, not the European Commission. That is an illusion which has now been banished once and for all, and that is good, because it will put an end to the impunity which France and Germany granted themselves, back in 2003, to refuse to apply the rules whenever they themselves breached them.
In my view, another positive aspect of last Friday’s summit is that we have also got rid of Ms Merkel’s kiss of death, namely, the idea that private investors in government bonds should take their cut of the profits. Obviously, that idea sounded fine and it went down well here, in this House, too, but, in reality, as Mr Trichet indicated previously, that has cost us billions of euro and has only made the euro crisis worse. We ought to be pleased that this summit has achieved that. There were two people who came out of the summit with a broad smile on their face: Mr Sarkozy and Ms Merkel. Why exactly were they smiling? Because we put an end to the deal that they forged a year earlier. That has been the outcome of this summit.
Will that be enough, though? Will this spell the return of American, Asian and European investors who have offloaded large quantities of European countries’ government bonds in recent days and weeks? Will they again start investing in the shares of European financial institutions, mostly French financial institutions which themselves have government bond portfolios? Well, I have my doubts. Could this agreement be enough to stop the haemorrhage? Sadly, I believe that it will not be enough to restore confidence in the euro.
Why so, you may ask. The fact is that the European Council has addressed only
aspect of the problem, that of budgetary discipline; we are still playing catch-up with the facts and, yet, refusing to take up the solidarity aspect with the government leaders. Ladies and gentlemen, a monetary union is not only about discipline, it is also about solidarity. It works the other way around, too: it is not only about solidarity, but about discipline, too. Discipline without solidarity means that you do not have a Union at all and solidarity without discipline creates a bottomless money pit.
Mr President, from this day forward, we cannot afford to hesitate. The crisis must be addressed across the board and in depth. Let us be honest about it and recognise that the Council does not have the competence to achieve that. The Council has already met on so many occasions over the last two years, and, yet, each time it has come up with halfway measures. I believe that we, as Parliament, should take the lead here; it is we who need to mark out the road that will lead us out of the crisis. We need to ask the Commission to work with the European Parliament over the coming weeks to put an overall approach on the table, that of the Council and that of Parliament.
Finally some words in English to our British friends. I think that after a few nights, David Cameron will also come to the conclusion that he made the blunder of a lifetime. If Mr Cameron really wants to obtain additional guarantees for the City, he needs to be at the negotiation table. Why? Because in politics, there is one golden rule: you only walk away if you are sure that the others will come after you to win you back. That is the reality. Kohl and Mitterrand did it with Mrs Thatcher. To use an English expression for our British friends: When you are invited to the table, it is either as a guest or you are part of the menu. Dear colleagues, that can happen now."@en1
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