Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-09-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20050309.15.3-175"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to say something about the Stability and Growth Pact, because it is regrettable that the ECOFIN Council failed to reach agreement on it earlier this week. I hope, and very much trust, that Mr Juncker, who will attend both this extra ECOFIN meeting and the summit, will be able to carry on his work. Indeed, it is with sorrow that I look upon the Pact’s reform being turned into a
. I fear that it will be reduced to common horse trading between Member States, particularly the large ones, something we have experienced all too often in the past. It is time our Heads of State or Government displayed real vision and leadership.
My group has indicated many times that it is in favour of the Pact being reformed, which would result in growth, without putting the euro’s stability at risk, and so I think it would be useful if a quality assessment were to be made of Member State budget spending. This was borne out this morning during the discussion of the Lisbon strategy. In Europe, there is too little investment in the education and research that will enable it to become the competitive knowledge economy we desperately aspire to be. The Pact should not obstruct us in those endeavours.
In industry, businesses would be out of the running if they failed to invest in the future. I should, however, add that in industry, investments are not written off over one year. So why do we do this in the Pact? What is stopping us from applying a longer depreciation period to the Lisbon investments too? This would involve a change to the substance, which would create space without putting discipline at risk.
Another change that must be made is for us to start thinking more along European lines. It is wholly acceptable that government influence should impact on the economy, provided that it is done at European, rather than national, level. It seems that the leaders at the summit predominantly want to create a catalogue of excuses which will help them escape discipline and which they can use for all possible kinds of policy. My group favours a strong role for the Commission and considers that the rules of the game and the assessments should be drafted jointly, from a European perspective."@en1
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