Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2014-02-25-Speech-2-036-000"
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"en.20140225.4.2-036-000"2
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"Mr President, I want to thank the rapporteurs and in particular our employment rapporteur, Sergio Gutiérrez Prieto, for his excellent work and good cooperation.
Our Committee looked at the social and employment aspects of the European Semester and to me they are central to the debate. They are not some side issue; they are not some afterthought to be taken into consideration when the economic issues are dealt with. That is why, in my opinion, social indicators are just as valid as economic ones and in my view they should be binding. In our employment report we added additional indicators such as child poverty levels, access to health care, homelessness and a decent work index.
The Commissioner for Human Rights from the Council of Europe, in his Report on Safeguarding human rights in times of economic crisis, said that most austerity measures have exacerbated the already severe human consequences of the economic crisis and that vulnerable and marginalised groups have been disproportionately hit. These are not just words, they describe the lives of real people and I would say to Mr[nbsp ]Barroso, who I think is no longer with us, that yes, some small progress has been made but for many countries it is not a sustainable model. Yes, deficits have been reduced, but debts mount.
Last night in this Parliament I spoke of Eurostat figures from 2012 and my own country, Ireland. If you take the general government gross debt and consolidated private debt, that total debt as a percentage of GDP is a staggering 420[nbsp ]%. In Portugal it is 340[nbsp ]%, in Greece, 285[nbsp ]% and in Spain, 280[nbsp ]%.
So without significant growth those debt figures that I spoke of become overwhelming, and how can we have growth if we do not have targeted investments? Are we saying to those countries: tough, get used to it, the crisis will continue, the grinding, scraping along the bottom that we call progress will continue?
Yes, people do associate Europe with austerity. Why? Because that is where the policy originates, ably assisted by some Member States. In my own country an assessment of the last five budgets showed that the hardest hit by those budgetary policies are the very rich and the very poor. That is why we need binding social targets."@en1
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