Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-26-Speech-2-113"
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"en.19991026.3.2-113"2
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"Mr President, Mr Duisenberg, we MEPs, as we have stated a number of times this evening, have a unique role to play in relation to the single currency because this Chamber here is the only place in which the people of Europe can have any democratic input into how their new currency is run. We must not shy away from addressing the difficult issues which surround Europe’s single currency, because if we do so we will be letting down those people who elected us to this Chamber so recently.
Mr Duisenberg, in my view, you have a more or less impossible task because you have to set a rate that is suitable not only for the booming economies of Ireland and Spain but will also suit the faltering economy of Germany. Still less would it be possible to fix a rate which would also suit the persistently divergent economy of the UK. But none of us here doubt the importance of your role because a domestic Euroland government faced with reviving a faltering economy has very few weapons at its disposal. It has no power to set interest rates, no power over exchange rates, little power over government spending restricted by the Stability Pact and, if many people in this Parliament had their way, it would have no power over its own tax rates.
The governments have very few cards left to play with and not for nothing has it been said that the euro could lead to a recipe for stagnation. But we should not be surprised at the limitations on the powers that are left to the domestic governments in Euroland because it has never been a secret of those founding fathers of the single currency that what they had in mind was the creation of political union and a united states of Europe. I welcome your frankness, Mr Duisenberg, in making clear the very big political leap which has been made by those countries which have already entered Euroland.
But anyone who denies the existence of this political agenda – which subsumes the single currency – in my view is either deluded or dishonest, because it is a very real agenda. We saw that very recently, articulately presented to us by President Prodi when he said that we now face the best opportunity to unite Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. Clearly, Mr Prodi had in mind the replacement of an ancient hegemony with a new economic one. But political union may not just be the idle dream of a few federalists. When you share a joint bank account with your neighbour you are affected by the actions and the spending decisions of your neighbour. You legitimately need some control over their actions. There is a very strong argument for saying that the single currency cannot function properly unless there is increased political integration and political union. That is one of the many reasons why the British Conservatives are campaigning vigorously to persuade the UK to keep its own currency and to keep the pound and to stay out of the single currency."@en1
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"Villiers (PPE )."1
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