Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-117"
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"en.20040915.6.3-117"2
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"Mr President, I am surely not the only one who feels a little strange when reading the communications and listening to the declarations that were made a moment ago. Although the intention is, reportedly, to strengthen the Pact, nearly all speakers have referred to its being weakened or relaxed. While it is apparently not the intention to touch the 3% standard specified in the Treaty, my gut feeling is that it is precisely this budget standard that is proving difficult to deal with. Furthermore, the enforcement of the Pact needs to be stepped up, but there is a great deal of wishful thinking about the greater impact of what is referred to as peer pressure, which certainly did not work for the big countries, and there is little in the way of more power for the Commission or of a decision-making alternative in the Council, which would lead to truly better enforcement. The advantage of the announcement is, though, that it was made now and that an open debate will follow suit, and we have plenty of cause for this. In the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, this has already been the topic of an extensive debate, and we want to contribute our might with an open mind, but we will not change our guiding principle. Consequently, we have never said that the Stability and Growth Pact is stupid. On the contrary, we found it to be a valuable instrument, and still do. The fact that more harmonisation is sought with other economic policy instruments, as well as fine-tuning in certain areas, an optimisation of the debt ratio, economic realism, all of these are open to discussion. What is unacceptable to us, however, is that the Stability and Growth Pact should be adapted to please a few governments. The Pact should prompt discipline, it should be a big stick to keep us on the right track. That means that the Pact must be geared to long-term challenges of our social market economy, and should not be thrown off course by short-term sirens."@en1
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