Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-029"
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"en.20010404.2.3-029"2
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"Mr President, Prime Minister, Mr Prodi, on the front page of yesterday’s Financial Times, Horst Köhler, the head of the International Monetary Fund, was lashing out at European political leaders, albeit in a very civilised way. Referring to the economic situation, he said that a reduction in interest rates by the European Central Bank would undoubtedly help the European economy, but it is at least as important for Europe to bring about more ambitious transformations. When, in the same connection, he says the IMF would probably lower its forecast for growth for the euro area for this year to 2.5%, we can see that the financial players have reacted to the totally indecisive outcome of the Stockholm Summit with as much disappointment as my own Group, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, here in Parliament. We have thus already fallen below the 3% growth target that was set for the mid term as a basis for sustaining and improving employment and social security in Europe.
Stockholm was like a mini Nice, without the squabbles. Nobody wanted to speak up for the European common good, and most governments clung to their own interests, such as they imagined them to be. That is what happened, despite what was certainly an enormous effort to achieve results on the part of the country to hold the presidency. At the beginning of the year someone joked that the aims of Lisbon had become the promises of Nikita Khrushchev. It was he who said at the start of the 1960s that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in ten years in terms of economic power. In the wake of the Stockholm meeting, there is going to be a grain of truth in that joke. We have to remember that the decisions that are now required concerning European patents, the liberalisation of competition among the gas and electricity boards and in the Post Office, making air traffic more flexible, Galileo, and other matters, will not result in any real changes until four to ten years have gone by after the political decision is taken.
I would nonetheless like to mention one positive decision that was taken at Stockholm. At last a nugget of something concrete has been found for a policy on the northern dimension. Hopefully, it will encourage not just us in the European Union, but the Russians too, to seek and find suitable targets of cooperation in other areas. As a Finn, I would ask the Prime Minister of our beloved neighbour and the country to hold the presidency the following question. The conclusions of Stockholm state that the sound economic situation that has lasted quite a long time now in the European Union would not have been possible without monetary and economic union: has the Swedish government started preparations to fulfil their Community obligations by joining the third phase of monetary and economic union?
[And in Swedish: Sweden is always welcome to join the club.]"@en1
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"Och på svenska: Sverige är alltid välkommen i klubben."1
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