Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-143"
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"en.20040915.6.3-143"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Almunia has interpreted Shakespeare brilliantly. As in Mark Anthony’s funeral speech, he sings the praises of budgetary austerity but, at the same time, tells us that he has put in place the necessary explosives to bring down the pillars supporting it.
The Commissioner advocates simple rules but, at the same time, he tells us that we must take account of the national circumstances of each country, which means there will be 25 different rules.
What we were saying yesterday about the Stability Pact is still true today. It is absolutely true that we must maintain the austerity pact in order to maintain price stability; that budgetary austerity serves to free up resources for education, research and development in order to make the Lisbon process possible; and, above all, that it is necessary to meet the implicit, hidden, unbudgeted-for obligations resulting from the ageing of the population.
What we were saying yesterday is still true today. And if we are saying other things, that is simply because we are treating the Stability Pact as done for. The Stability Pact was good, the bad thing was that it was not complied with.
Secondly, Commissioner, all of those who have always been in the Stability Pact are the ones who are today applauding your measures and all of us who have always been in favour of the Stability Pact are the ones who are against the Commission’s proposal for making it flexible, unequal and discretionary.
Thirdly, Commissioner, the applause of the governments is not disinterested applause. The Stability Pact is not a pact in favour of the governments, it is a pact against governments, for restricting their action, in order not to neutralise the actions of the Central Bank and in order to maintain price stability.
And if it is a pact against the governments and in favour of the citizens – and in this regard I agree with what the chairperson of the committee has said – you will have the support of my group in enhancing the powers of the Commission, against the Council, and the powers of Parliament, as representative of the citizens, to defend that budgetary stability, which will provide the citizens with lower prices, lower interest rates for their mortgages and will help to guarantee that we will have resources in the future to attend to the needs of our pensioners and that we will not have squandered those resources by paying interest and paying off debt.
The PPE-DE Group will support the Commissioner in this debate. But if the intention is to draw up rules that make the application of the Pact discretionary, unequal and ultimately unfair, in accordance with the ‘
’ principle, the Commissioner will not have our support."@en1
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