Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-25-Speech-3-069"
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"en.20040225.5.3-069"2
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"Mr President, the European Union is in a difficult situation; our monetary policy is centralised, with responsibility for it resting with the European Central Bank, whilst financial and economic policy is decentralised. The connecting link that enables the whole thing to function, and allows us to develop the internal market, is the Stability and Growth Pact, and let me say here and now that I urge us all to adhere to it, including the Eurozone’s two biggest countries, Germany and France. We therefore support the Commission in its case before the European Court of Justice, in which it is seeking to prevent the competences under the Stability and Growth Pact from becoming obscured.
On its own, though, that is not enough; achievement of the Lisbon target is a task not only for the Member States, but also for the Commission and Parliament. It is for the Member States to bring forward the reforms that are needed in the labour market, in the social field, in fiscal policy, in making locations attractive and in promoting forward-looking sectors of industry. That is for the Member States to do, and we cannot discharge them from that responsibility. It is for the Commission to set a sound industrial policy in motion, something we have, over recent years, neglected to institute in parallel with the promotion of the service sector and the phasing-in of the European internal market. Over and over again, considerations of consumer and environmental protection predominated. If we want to stake a claim on our place in the world, then this is where we have to move forward.
I call upon the Commission to give serious consideration to imposing a moratorium of between three and five years on environmental and consumer legislation. That is the only way in which we will actually reach the Lisbon objectives, for so far we have done no more than prepare for the journey; we have actually remained standing still. Only a moratorium of this kind on the part of the European Union, which in any case leads the world in protecting the environment and people at work, and in the social field, can enable us to become what we decided at Lisbon that we wanted to be – the most competitive region in the world."@en1
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