Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-11-Speech-2-259"
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"en.20030311.10.2-259"2
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"Mr President, our group voted against this report in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. In its current form, this report fails to challenge the principles of the neo-liberal credo, which unfortunately are at the heart of many Community policies. Yesterday, the dock workers brought this home to us forcefully in this very city and with every justification. The report does not query the validity of the stability and growth programmes to any significant extent. It is worth considering the meaning of the terms ‘growth’ and ‘stability’. By definition, things that are ‘stable’ do not grow. Growth means movement; stability means the opposite. Certainly, the reality is dialectical in nature. On the other hand, this use of words could be construed as an attempt to resolve a contradiction.
The report appears to reject any initiative to make the stability and growth criteria more flexible, and particularly the famous 3% criterion. Given the present economic difficulties, some Member States, and not just the smallest among them, are finding it increasingly difficult to comply with the 3% rule. Will this remedy kill the patient? We should note that experts from both the European Union and Member States gave overly optimistic predictions of growth. We hoped that the American economy would show signs of recovery, and that the European economy would follow suit. This has not happened, however. The policies pursued by Member States and the European Union were therefore based on inaccurate data. In this respect, the rigidity of the criteria of the Stability and Growth Pact seems to run counter to the fundamentals of good governance. People better qualified than I on this subject have spoken strongly on the matter.
We should envisage policies of Keynesian cyclic recovery. We should also consider policies aimed at achieving long-term improvement of the bases of the economy. These include, for example, energy efficiency and the provision of training. I would like to add that good governance implies reliable economic data, meaning the State must benefit from the Rule of Law. The fact that the Basque newspaper
has been banned for six months makes one wonder whether the Basque country is still within a country where the Rule of Law prevails."@en1
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