Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-05-Speech-2-088"
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"en.19991005.5.2-088"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, macro-economic assistance for the three countries which lie outside the war zone but which have suffered in the extreme during the war in Kosovo is only right and very important. Each of you will be thinking, are there still questions about this issue? Support for lasting, successful development in the countries concerned is, however, urgently necessary. Here, I wish to clearly state again on behalf of my group, that we want to do everything to ensure that Bulgaria and Romania are not left behind in the process of enlarging the European Union. These countries, and also the neighbouring country of Macedonia, urgently need our political and economic support. In this connection, I should again like to remind you that this Parliament has decided here on several occasions that the visa requirement for entering and leaving Romania and Bulgaria, which constitutes a form of exclusion, should finally be removed. The Council and the Commission should urgently state their position on this issue at the Helsinki Summit.
On the question of financial assistance, the Commission and the Council always extol their splendid charitable initiatives in referring to the huge sums given by way of macro-economic aid. Have you ever asked, though, how effective this macro-economic assistance is in regard to economically and socially-balanced development in these crisis-racked countries? What basically is the money for? Whose pockets is it really going into? The truth is that not a single euro benefits the people in the region, neither small and medium-sized businesses nor the education and health systems. Nor is the money used to create employment. It does not contribute either to the local and regional infrastructure, the reconstruction of which is an important prerequisite for investment. No, it amounts to nothing more than bribes for international banking systems. It offsets the indebtedness into which the IMF has brought these countries. It flows practically direct into the coffers of the international banks and in that way contributes to the further indebtedness of the so-called recipient countries. It is also only a credit, even if the conditions are better than those of the EMF. Nonetheless, the conditions are: save on health care and on social insurance and pensions systems. The result: the further impoverishment of broad strata of the populations of the countries concerned. Is that what we mean by stability? Can stability in the region be based upon further indebtedness and further impoverishment? In practice, the macro-economic assistance only contributes to account being taken of the budgetary conditions of the EMF. The indebtedness is therefore compounded. In other words, we need a change of direction in the structure, and we need politics to again assume priority in this domain and responsibility for economic and socially-balanced development which is genuinely stable."@en1
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