Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-03-Speech-3-089"
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"en.20031203.7.3-089"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, we had a debate in Strasbourg on the Stability and Growth Pact as long ago as 21 October 2002. Even then, I made it plain that there was no argument against limiting states’ new public indebtedness, provided that this was coupled with the requirement that growth be generated and demand stimulated. Growth and an increase in demand will not, however, be achieved by cutting wages or by longer working hours, but by taking the tax burden off the low and middle income groups, through public investment, capital-widening investment by businesses and by increasing private consumption.
The decision by the eurozone finance ministers to put the Excessive Deficit Procedure against Germany and France on ice and grant these states a reprieve, allowing them until 2005 to achieve the 3% limit for new annual indebtedness is a lazy compromise, one that does not alter the false basic premise, according to which, in economically tough times, strict adherence to the 3% limit has an expansionary rather than a contractionary effect. In order to reinvigorate investment across the board, any reform of the Stability Pact must go hand in hand with more European economic, social, employment, fiscal and environmental policies. It must be possible to use loans to fund public investment, even if this does, for a period, take the deficit over the 3% limit.
Such would be, in my judgment, an honest and proper course of action, without which we would lose all credibility and the same problem would rear its head in more countries every year.
You may think otherwise, but my view is that we should correct mistakes rather than try to cover them up with new ones."@en1
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