Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-03-Speech-3-067"
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"en.19991103.6.3-067"2
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"Mr President, at the European Summit in Cologne, the Council decided on a European Employment Pact with a view to cutting unemployment substantially and permanently. One of the three main components of this Pact concerns the institutionalisation of the macroeconomic dialogue at European level.
My political group would firstly like to state that this dialogue is the latest in a long line of hybrid “European talking-shops”. As the proposals stand at the moment, four parties are involved in this dialogue: representatives of the European institutions, of various committees, of employers and employees, the latter two insofar as they are organised at European level.
Secondly, this consultative body, on account of its tripolarity, embraces elements of both government and society. Its corporate nature casts uncertainty on who should be held responsible for the realisation of the macroeconomic policy and its implementation. In this way, transparency and the separation of powers, two key principles of our European democratic constitutional states, are not honoured at European level. Put more bluntly, they are being blatantly ignored and, as such, further jeopardised.
Also, it is quite remarkable that the European Union appears to be assuming the dimensions of a state, whilst it is primarily a cooperative of national states and as such, could not be a state in itself and never will be. With this proposal, the European Union seems to have become too big for its own boots and chooses to ignore the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality for the time being.
A fourth point concerns the serious possibility of overlap with the Economic and Social Committee. The transparency of the process for developing the general guidelines for economic policy and employment policy would benefit more from an official and public recommendation by the Economic and Social Committee than from tripartite-flavoured consultation, the outcome of which has, at best, the quality of obligatory effort. Could the Commission explain how it views the relationship between the proposed macroeconomic dialogue and the existing Economic and Social Committee? Do European bodies not run the risk of endlessly repeating themselves? After all, meetings cost time and money. Could the European Commission indicate how it sees the intrinsic role of the Economic and Social Committee once the macroeconomic dialogue has been set up?
Fifthly, the macroeconomic dialogue concerns a field of policy with regard to which the European Union does not issue any legislation. Macroeconomic policy and employment policy are primarily a matter for the individual Member States. Needless to say, it is beneficial for Member States to exchange ideas and dovetail their policies, as far as the macroeconomic situation in the relevant country allows for this. General agreements are reached via guidelines, within which the Member States have sufficient scope for a degree of policy freedom necessary to incorporate measures which will accommodate the specific features of their national economy. Given this situation, a macroeconomic dialogue at European level is largely up in the air. Efforts are, of course, required to reduce the unemployment levels which are still far too high. We should, in particular, focus our attention on the long-term unemployed. But talks at an abstract European level do not create jobs. We therefore advocate freedom of policy at regional and local level because that is the level at which there is expertise in the actual labour market. Exchange of information and good practices at European level are highly commendable but the official institutionalisation of a European macroeconomic dialogue hardly has any impact on this, if any."@en1
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