Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-036"
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"en.20000705.2.3-036"2
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"Mr President, when it adopted the Radwan report, the majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs missed a rare and valuable opportunity to draw attention to reasons for the weakness of the euro that cannot be laid at the door of the European Central Bank. The sheer nonsense that we have heard here demonstrates how important the ECB’s independence is. The argument that the euro’s weakness is also a consequence of Euroland’s enormous bureaucracy, which – in the words of acknowledged experts – has a Socialist tendency and limits individuals’ freedoms, was rejected by a majority of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs for clearly ideological reasons. The same fate was suffered by other amendments to the effect that the euro area is totally overloaded with heavy taxes, thus penalising entrepreneurialism.
Rigid structures, the slow pace of liberalisation in important sectors of the economy and differences between inflation rates in individual euro Member States, which are already a cause for concern, are the reason why the improvement in public finances in many Member States is not the result of a sustained reduction in public expenditure and structural reforms, but rather a consequence of low interest rates and a heavier tax burden, which represent a threat to the Stability Pact. I would like to have seen all these points included in the report. It would also have been a good thing for this Parliament if it had had the courage to recognise in this particular report that the present weakness in the single European currency is chiefly due to a lack of economic flexibility. Nevertheless, I am glad that at least some reservations have been voiced about certain decisions taken recently in the euro countries, for example on working hours, which instead of making the labour market flexible have made it rigid, and are also contributing to the euro’s weakness. I do not mind saying this, even if Mr Brie, the chief ideologist of Germany’s old communists, whose party wrecked a whole state and who would do better to keep quiet here, does not like it.
This is an unequivocal signal to voters in the euro area to give the all too numerous Red-Green governments their marching orders, if they…"@en1
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