Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-254"
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"en.20030311.10.2-254"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the reports being discussed today are major, substantial documents – before I start I must pay tribute to the rapporteurs for that – and they represent a major contribution to the debate on the policy guidelines for public finances in Europe. The radical Members will support them in their present form.
I do not want to go into the details of the individual resports, but I would like to take this opportunity to make some more general comments. Firstly, I believe that we should be a little mistrustful of high-sounding slogans and goals such as the Lisbon objectives, to which we are constantly referring. I do not feel that the fact that Europe decided at a certain juncture to set itself, and I quote once again: ‘a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth’ and all the other goals we are familiar with is either a great leap forward or the basis for a new economic policy for the Member States, unless we think that, in the past, the States did not want to make their countries competitive countries and did not want to aim at full employment.
In addition to constantly stressing these objectives and performing analyses – the European Parliament is a political body, not a research centre – I feel we should discuss the reason why these high-sounding goals are not being met and which are the political costs which we in Europe do not have the courage to face in order to achieve them, to convert them into practical reforms, the reforms discussed in the reports before us today. I feel that the European economic structures need to be completely overhauled.
We are continually referring with pride to the European social model and the social market economy, but then we state explicitly in the reports – I think this is the case with Mr García-Margallo’s report – that the fate of the European social model is dependent on US economic recovery: if there is no economic recovery in the United States there will be no economic growth in Europe, and the social model we are so proud of will experience much more difficult times than those we are already experiencing today.
The economic crisis in Germany is an indication of the crisis of an old economic model, the model of an old Europe which has nothing left to invest. We state repeatedly in the reports that we need more public investment – although we do not say where we are to find the money – and more private investment. I do not believe that private investment in Europe is low because of interest rates or, therefore, that our only objective should be to pressurize the European Central Bank to give us a more flexible interest rate policy, thereby facilitating private investment. Private investment will not increase because of lower interest rates: it will increase if and when we have a more flexible economy, with flexibility introduced in large doses.
Reforms to make the economy more flexible carry a political cost, and we are failing to discuss that cost: there is a price to be paid for meddling with the structure of the labour market and going against the powerful lobbies constituted by the monopolies – half of the European Union’s budget is tied up in agricultural subsidies and protection – and there is a political cost for considering using these resources to spark off a new wave of investment in high technology and scientific research.
I will end with a comment on the subject of pensions: the need for rigorous national budgets arises, first and foremost, from the need for national budgets to have the capacity to deal with the problems related to the aging of the population and the costs derived from the structural reform of the pensions systems. We owe this to the future generations of European citizens."@en1
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