Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-25-Speech-1-059"
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"en.20041025.13.1-059"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by warmly congratulating Mr Trichet on the way in which he has done a good job of continuing the work of his predecessor Mr Wim Duisenberg. Mr Trichet, your performance in office to date has helped to ensure, and indeed further enhance, the European Central Bank’s credibility and independence. Through the annual report for 2003 and the monetary dialogue involving you and the members of your Executive Board, the ECB has fully discharged its duty of accountability to the European Parliament. What makes the report convincing is its format, its clarity and the wealth of useful information it contains.
We are glad to see that the ECB’s annual report stresses the maintenance of price stability as the Bank’s primary objective and principal task. The Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament not only accepts this as a core task for the ECB, but, moreover, emphasises that it has priority. This is where we are as one with the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats. We are also aware that the ECB is independent. The European Central Bank needs no lectures on what its interest rate policy should have been like in the past or what it must be like in the future. The euro zone’s economic weakness is attributable neither to any lack of confidence in the euro nor simply to a lack of demand that might have been avoided by aggressive cutting of interest rates. The determining factor is, instead, a general lack of confidence on the part of the public and the business community in their own countries’ economic policies, and the sluggishness of reforms, particularly in the large euro zone countries.
In saying this, I am thinking of the necessary reforms to the tax system, to the labour market, to the social security systems and to the health sector, which have, for far too long, been put off or tackled merely half-heartedly. To these things, Mr Trichet, you have already referred in your speech.
Being the only institution in the European Union to be directly elected and democratically legitimate, this year again the European Parliament will not fail to play its part as the champion of transparency. While I know that you, Mr Trichet, take a different line on this, it is with this in mind that we propose that the ECB should publish comprehensive minutes of the meetings of its Governing Council, including the voting results in full, albeit without attribution of individual votes. We also think it would make sense to produce a yearbook on economic development similar to the ‘Beige Book’ of the Federal Reserve in the USA, something that the Group of the European People’s Party has also called for. This would enable the public to have first-hand and readily-accessible information on the economic positions of their own country and of all the countries in the euro zone. Such a volume would make for greater transparency and could also build up the public’s identification with the European Union.
By way of conclusion, let me call upon the European Central Bank, as a matter of urgency, to continue to watch, with a critical and attentive eye, over adherence to the Stability and Growth Pact and, together with Eurostat, to compel the countries of the euro zone to produce reliable figures. What has happened with Greece must not be allowed to happen again. We look forward to your feedback, Mr Trichet, and to continued close cooperation with you in the future."@en1
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