Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-031"
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"en.20000517.2.3-031"2
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"Mr President, I have very mixed feelings about the recommendations on economic policy put forward by the Commission, and also about the report by Mr Katiforis, and I feel there is a great deal of food for thought. However, we reject the overall view. Firstly, it is quite astonishing how ready the other groups are to accept, without criticism, a fairly dogmatic kind of neo-liberalism. Reference is made in the recitals, with evident concern, to the decline in public investment in infrastructure, yet in the conclusions one is expressly warned against an active public investment policy.
In my view, flexibility, liberalisation and monetarism are the one-sided aspects of this policy. Given that express reference is made to the fact that current economic policy is guided by the objectives of the Stability Pact, and the Commission wants to go further still, then it is obvious that social, cultural and environmental needs will inevitably be sacrificed to this as a matter of principle.
Secondly, owing to radical technological change, and I quote: “an overall revision in the conditions of work, remuneration and taxation” is being called for, with no reference to the need to conserve and rejuvenate the social and participatory institutions that have determined the nature and success of the European social model.
Thirdly, as someone has already mentioned, this report talks in terms of a new fetishism for growth. Full employment, and even the transition to the knowledge-based society are thought to be almost exclusively dependent on higher growth. On the other hand, there is no reference whatsoever to the fair distribution of available gainful employment, the realisation of a modern, third economic sector for social, cultural and environmental services, regionalisation of economic cycles, demand-orientated policy, or even the content of a knowledge-based society in social, educational policy and cultural terms. It is evident from the recitals that, for the sake of economic growth, allowance is even made for transgression of the vital Kyoto Agreement on the climate. Now that is what I call scandalous!
Fourthly, the report advocates further flexibilisation of the financial systems, as opposed to at last getting to grips with the fact that this policy benefits speculative currencies and share operations, and disadvantages real economic investment, which clearly accounts for the structural weakness of investments lamented in the report. In economic policy terms, reason dictates that we should at last think seriously about concepts such as the Tobin tax."@en1
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