Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-21-Speech-1-038"
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"en.20021021.4.1-038"2
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"Mr President, the application of the Stability and Growth Pact has ended up in a dead end, because it has wrongly focused on current budget deficits rather than on the structural deficits, which are what really matter. How long the Commission has taken to admit this! I would like to remind you that this Parliament took the view in 1997 that the Stability and Growth Pact had to be flexibly applied, and there was a majority across the group boundaries in support of this.
The Stability and Growth Pact is basically suited to being used as an instrument to coordinate European finance policies. The Economic and Monetary Union needs a regulatory framework, one that, when flexibly implemented, is able to take market trends into account. A rigid interpretation, on the contrary, would let budget deficits increase as a result of the ensuing more pronounced tendency to cyclical weakening and the associated reduction in revenues and increase in expenditure.
The automatic stabilisers must, though, be applied by all, and comprehensively, when the economy as a whole is going through a slack period. Their use should not be tied to good behaviour clauses that cannot be made good, or else the goals of the Lisbon process – competitiveness, full employment and social cohesion – will be out of our reach.
A balanced budget aims for the mid-point of a cycle, and this objective must always be considered against the background of the conditions of the economic climate. That is why neither the Treaty nor the Pact envisage permanent precision or provide for a binding timetable, nor would such a thing be compatible with any interpretation of the Pact that accorded with its purpose.
What is unsatisfactory about the application of the Pact is the fact that it puts too little emphasis on economic growth, which means that a distinction has to be drawn between deficits that result from current expenditure and those arising from productive capital expenditure. This could be done if European financial policy were to be guided by reference to the structural deficit. Only then will the Stability and Growth Pact be able to play its part as a positive instrument of coordination. That includes, however, efficient coordination of economic policies, with Parliament involved. On this also, Mr Prodi and Mr Solbes Mira, I look forward to the Commission coming up with an unambiguous initiative."@en1
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