Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-09-Speech-3-166"
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"en.20050309.15.3-166"2
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"Mr President, I agree with the Commission President's conclusions. I believe that Europe is currently standing at a crossroads. Europe could enter a crisis period if the Constitutional Treaty is not ratified either now or in a few years' time, that is, if we are unable to define Europe in a way that affirms our political and economic identity to the outside world. We need to be defining Europe now in line with the mandate of the current Commission and of this House.
To do that, in economic terms – which is what we are considering today – macro-economic stability is essential. The other minimum requirement is speeding up the Lisbon reform process in order to increase employment and productivity, and therefore competitiveness, which will narrow the gap between us and the United States and enable us to stand up to competition from emerging countries.
We discussed the Lisbon reforms this morning, so I am going to return to the importance of the Stability Pact. I feel that we need to be very honest with one another on this matter. We are going to reform the Stability Pact not because its internal logic has failed, nor the ideas underpinning it, but rather for the simple reason that too many countries have failed to comply with its terms, notably the larger countries. Since it is the larger Member States who are forcing us to revise the Pact, we need to know what they are willing to do – which is what we have just heard.
They are willing to accept reform of the preventative features of the Pact and to make an effort in the good times, simply because they know that no world power can force them to comply with the rules. In terms of prevention, they want to slacken and break the rules to the point where – as one German Social Democrat has said – there are no absolute rules.
There are two options – and only two – in this state of affairs: either we move towards economic governance, economic coordination, and an independent judge incapable of imposing any sanctions, or we maintain the existing automatic procedures.
We have not wanted to move ahead with economic coordination. The Intergovernmental Conference reversed all the tentative progress made by the Convention on the subject of coordination, leaving us in exactly the same position as before. Nor do we want to continue with the automatic processes. All that will happen in this Council and in future Councils is that we will move backwards. The question is how far will we backtrack, and at what pace?
The exemptions to the rules we set ourselves amount to weakening, to giving ground on the Stability Pact. How much you are willing to concede will determine our future credibility, our economic strength, and will affect whether or not we avoid the economic crisis I anticipate in the coming years."@en1
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