Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-142"
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"en.20040915.6.3-142"2
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".
I am very grateful that you have given me the opportunity to say a few words now. I apologise for leaving earlier but the problem is that I am not only President-in-Office of the Council and Netherlands Minister of Finance, I am also replacing the Prime Minister at the moment because he is in hospital. I have many obligations to fulfil.
There were some questions about the golden rule. As such, the golden rule is a pro-cyclical system. It was used in the 19th century in many countries. I do not think it would be good for economics today.
Other questions were asked about the role of Mr Juncker. He will be President of the Euro Group. There are some advantages to having a longer-term president, who will also be its face
the outside world, for example in the G-7. If people see a new minister of finance come from the Euro Group every six months, it will not make a very strong impression. Such a president also organise and plan for a longer period than just six months.
I hope that in the coming weeks and months we can work further on this issue. As I said, the Commission proposals are a good basis for discussion. They will probably not be accepted lock, stock and barrel, but I do not think the Commission ever expected that. We already have some basis for consensus in the paper I presented to you today. I hope that we will get full consensus on an operational Pact that is really implemented.
After listening to all the statements it is clear that there is a wide variety of opinion in Parliament. I am not surprised by that. Maybe we can reach some consensus here. As President-in-Office of the Council I must be very careful in expressing my views because I have not had an opportunity to check whether all my 24 colleagues agree with my answers to some of the remarks made. Let me pick out a few themes.
First of all, as asked by various speakers, why did we have problems with the Pact? The basic mistake in the past has been that we did not make use the good times for consolidation. I believe that both Mr Poettering and Mr Klinz said a few words in that regard. My colleagues in France and Germany also concluded that if they had been in surplus or in balance before the downswing started, they would not have breached the 3% limit and all these troubles would not have arisen.
I think that is an important consensus. Those who now criticise the Pact for its rigidity are probably not the same people who advocated more rigid consolidation in the good times. Perhaps they felt that the good times were so nice that we could spend even more than the governments planned. That is my experience, at least.
We must be consistent during the entire cycle. If we consolidate firmly in good times then we can be more relaxed when the economic cycle takes a downturn. Stabilisation over the entire cycle – that is one of the lessons learned.
I hope, as I am sure you do, that we are now at the start of the upward part of the cycle. If we use that time well, the inevitable downturn will not, once again, lead us to the problems that we have previously encountered. We do not need any change to the text of the Pact in that regard.
As has been remarked by some speakers, the Stability and Growth Pact is not a solution to everything. We also have the Lisbon process. I do not believe that there has to be tension between the Stability Pact and the Lisbon process. Mr Schulz spoke of this tension. Personally, I do not believe that low deficits, the fact that the deficits were not high enough, are the real problem in relation to the lack of growth in Europe. We have to look at the necessary reforms and also set the right priorities in our budgets, so that we really spend the money within a budgetary framework and on the issues that are important for the Lisbon process.
I must point out that if we were more relaxed on deficits, interest payments would gradually crowd out other expenditure, such as expenditure on R[amp]D and education, which we all want. In the medium and long term, higher deficits are certainly not a solution for any Lisbon objective. They may even conflict with the Lisbon objectives.
A few of you were a bit afraid of an ad hoc approach, that we would not apply equal treatment to all the countries based on clear criteria. We discussed that in the Council and stated that we need a rules-based system for the future."@en1
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