Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-14-Speech-2-319"
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"Mr President, I shall try to reply and make some comments on both reports, as well as the speeches we have heard today in Parliament.
A second issue raised by Mr Marinos, which was also highlighted by some other speakers, is whether the broad economic policy guidelines and the Stability and Growth Pact are complementary or, to some extent, contradictory instruments. From the Commission’s point of view, the broad economic policy guidelines are the general framework and the Stability and Growth Pact the instrument we have with which to implement coordination in the specific field of budget deficit. These are very important for us to be able to achieve our two objectives through the coordination of economic policy: that fiscal policy should not hinder monetary policy and cause no externalities or spin off
effects that would have negative effects on other countries.
In our opinion, it is vital that we should maintain the Stability and Growth Pact in its current form and we believe that deficits are growth’s worst enemy, as experience has taught us over the last few years. Therefore, we must have sound macroeconomic policies to be able to increase growth and, consequently, to increase employment. This means that the Stability Pact should not be so rigid that it cannot be adapted to match new situations.
We believe that the experience gained over the past two years, clearly set out in our proposals, proves that the Stability Pact can also function in situations of economic slowdown. Mr Jonckheer expressed this concern this morning. I would say that the pact has worked well, that the automatic stabilisers have allowed us to adopt an expansionary fiscal stance. It is true that this has not been a discretionary policy, but we believe that the Pact has been as important – in relative terms and given the importance of automatic stabilisers – in Europe, as certain discretionary policies may have been in the United States. We believe that the advantage of our proposed system is not only its automatic operation, but also its capacity to avoid potential problems in future, especially when we have to deal with new situations of economic recovery in which we start from relatively comfortable positions in terms of budgetary balance.
Some other issues were raised this morning and this afternoon. Mr García-Margallo y Marfil this evening referred, in terms possibly close to his and my own, to the situation of dogmas and ecclesiastic definitions of the guardian of the dogma. Obviously, no one is claiming to be the guardian of any dogma, but it is clear that, as the Commission, we have the role of guardian of the Treaties, which means that we are obliged to apply the commitments as proposed. In this regard, we think that it is vitally important that the Stability Pact continues to be applied to all countries under the same conditions it has been applied up to now.
I have two further comments on what was said this morning. The issue of enlargement, as some of you have suggested, is not the objective of the broad economic policy guidelines. There are specific documents that deal with this issue and we are working on a system that allows us gradually to come closer to the broad guidelines so that we can apply them after enlargement has taken place. My second comment is directed to Mrs Berès. I have noted with great interest the references to the proposals for specific amendments and we will gratefully pass these on to the Council, which is now responsible for taking decisions on broad economic policy guidelines, given that this function is now out of the Commission’s hands.
I shall start with a comment on Mr Trentin’s report. Firstly, I would like to highlight its innovative approach. For the first time, a report has been presented that is not purely of a general nature, but which employs the technique of tabling amendments to the Commission’s recommendation. This appears to follow the line suggested by Mrs Berès. All the same, it is clear that the work we are currently doing has no bearing on the legislation currently in force, but it could be of enormous use in future developments in our debating system.
I would like to highlight a series of specific points from the Trentin report that I consider to be important. As an initial comment with regard to this issue, I agree with the rapporteur’s call for a global approach, which includes economic, social and environmental aspects amongst others, and, whilst we are on this subject, I would also like to refer to Mr Blokland’s speech, in which he emphasised the need to devote more attention to environmental issues, when these are in fact fairly clearly defined in the conclusions adopted at the time on these points.
There are two points I would like to highlight from Mr Trentin’s report – investment, and social and economic cohesion. There have been various references made all day with regard to investment which I should like to discuss.
In our view, the most important factor in investment working – and this is included in the broad economic policy guidelines – is a sound macroeconomic policy. This means price stability, reduction of risk premiums, reduction of interest rates, fully operative automatic stabilisers and, in short, better investment opportunities in terms of investor confidence. However, the broad economic policy guidelines include some more specific aspects that can be relevant from this point of view: to improve the quality of public finances, with accumulation of physical and human capital referred to in the document. We also talk about the further development of integrated networks and how they can be used efficiently. I shall make another comment on Mr Goebbels’ suggestions on energy, transport and communications later.
We also favour the promotion of investment in knowledge, in line with what was laid down in Lisbon and Barcelona, and we believe that we should not only invest in people, in education, in professional training and in apprenticeships, but also that we should propose a specific objective for research and development of up to 3% of GDP, a figure that should be reached by 2010. I also said that when we analyse the broad economic policy guidelines, we can see some specific references to investments in large networks and the possibility of more efficient functioning, for example. Whilst we are on this subject, and with regard to energy networks and infrastructure, I should point out that in December the Commission proposed to improve the European Investment Bank cofinancing systems and also the possibility of eliminating some of the bottlenecks in service transfers from one country to another, in both electricity and gas, which will allow us to improve interconnections and, in short, to reach our objective to improve our competitiveness in the energy sector for the year 2005. We are doing something very similar with regard to the interoperability of railways, with the objective – as I said before – of improving the efficiency of our system. Therefore, it is highly important – and Mr Goebbels made a reference to this point – that investments should be sound and should not cause problems related to the poor use of public money.
Mrs Randzio-Plath also referred to the problem of investment, suggesting the idea, which to me seems ambitious, to try to achieve an EU public investment level of 3%, the same as the United States, according to her. This is a point that we as the Commission, however, do not see in quantitative, but in qualitative terms, and we focus on our broad economic policy guidelines to highlight the importance of these issues.
In his report, Mr Marinos emphasises the importance of the Stability and Growth Pact more directly and, throughout the debate this morning and afternoon, there have been some proposals that seem important.
Mr Marinos focuses – and I can only thank him for this – on the importance of maintaining the Stability and Growth Pact in its present form. He mentioned not making political concessions, particularly to large Member States. This has never been the Commission’s vision, which is, in fact, that we should give equal treatment to all Member States, and we have always acted with this in mind. Our actions have even included the use of certain instruments that have sparked a certain amount of public debate. I am, of course, referring to the early warning system applied in Germany and Portugal, where I feel that, although we are not happy with the procedure – and as a member of the Commission I have stated this on more than one occasion – we are satisfied with the proposed objective."@en1
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