Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-22-Speech-2-048"
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"en.20050222.4.2-048"2
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"Mr President, the Member States have committed themselves to bringing their budgets close to balance or into surplus. That is a commitment under the Stability and Growth Pact, and countries such as Germany have breached it by running up deficits. Although they give cyclical problems as their excuse, they have failed to make the necessary structural reforms.
What the then German Finance Minister Theo Waigel secured agreement to in 1997 in the interests of Europe was a seriously meant guarantee of stable prices, budgetary discipline and the ability to react to structural changes, such as the need to finance a society with an increasingly elderly age profile. This was not about neo-liberal politics of the left, it was also in the interests of the workforce.
The Luxembourg Presidency announced a modification of the pact, not any easy task. Berlin wants to abolish the excessive deficit procedure, while the smaller countries in the euro area are quite rightly insisting that this pact should be observed to the letter. They have done their homework.
Mr Juncker told the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs that there was no question of changing the 3% threshold and the excessive deficit procedure. I am also in favour of the Commission keeping its powers in this area, from sending ‘blue letters’ to imposing fines. You, unfortunately, have announced an ‘intelligent interpretation’ of the pact. Does that not represent a watering down?
You quite rightly said that Greece must be held to account if it again submits falsified data. Please correct me if I am wrong, but, shortly afterwards, you led the Germans to believe that they could treat the cost of reconstructing the East as a special liability that could be taken out of the calculation. At that, other countries came along and said that their own investment in education, military installations or infrastructure should also be excluded. Once you enter the realms of creative accounting in this way, you can relegate the pact to the waste paper bin. You are just juggling figures and not providing any guarantee to Europe’s citizens.
I support my colleague Mr Karas’ excellent report; we must not play fast and loose with confidence in the euro."@en1
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