Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-16-Speech-4-176"
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".
Mr President, I thank Commissioner Almunia for the favourable welcome he has given my report, which is also the report of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
I would add, and I would like to stress this point, that we must not end up, in terms of world governance, with a kind of implicit hierarchy of standards that tries to place the Fund's recommendations at the pinnacle under the pretext that they affect not only macroeconomic stability and growth policies, but also labour market policies, the funding of social programmes, education and health. We must not end up with this hierarchy of standards placing the Fund's recommendations above all other international organisations, sometimes to the point of producing out-and-out contradictions between the Fund's recommendations and those of the international agreements of the International Labour Organisation or the World Health Organisation.
To conclude, we hope that the European Parliament feels more involved, particularly with the prospect of a single representation for the European Union, in the responsibility of the EU's administrators within the International Monetary Fund. We hope that, just as the Fund maintains regular relations with the US Congress, it will maintain regular relations with the European Parliament and that it will be equally accountable and responsible to the representatives of the European people.
Allow me to emphasise a fact that is important enough to be worth pointing out: the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs voted unanimously in favour of this report. I would also like to pay tribute to the work of the Committee on Development and the Committee on International Trade, and in particular that of their draftsmen, Mr Wijkman and Mr Bourlanges, who have greatly contributed to improving this report that comes at a time when the International Monetary Fund is reflecting on its strategy and on how to assess the development of its mission, the impact of its policies and the way in which it works.
I would like to return to the spirit in which the shadow rapporteurs and the entire committee worked to ensure that our Parliament's report makes a useful contribution to the strategic revision of the International Monetary Fund whilst taking account of the major challenges facing the fund: first the issue of its governance, then the issue of its economic doctrine and of the impact of its choices on the Millennium Goals, and finally, more generally, the way in which, through its role of monitoring and crisis prevention, it now continues to guarantee global macroeconomic and financial stability.
On the issue of governance, let me remind you that the Member States are currently divided into nine constituencies, which means that the European Union, if we can talk about the European Union in this context, has no unified representation. It is thus through these nine fragmented constituencies that the European Union expresses its opinion. It can also be seen - and this point is stressed in the report - that there is little or no coordination between the Member States within the International Monetary Fund. That is why this report advocates, firstly, strengthening coordination between the European seats and, secondly, step-by-step progress towards representation for the European Union as a whole within the International Monetary Fund with, of course, the prospect of a single seat, passing in the meantime via a single seat for the Eurozone.
As it stands, the report does not exactly refer to the issue of the single seat, but sets the objective of ensuring that the European Union is represented and votes as a single block within the International Monetary Fund, which seems to me to be an absolutely vital step. Why is it vital? Because it would give the European Union the blocking minority that it does not currently have, in other words 15% of the voting rights within the International Monetary Fund. The United States are currently the only ones to have a blocking minority, and we know what impact it can have on the major political and strategic choices that the International Monetary Fund has been able to make. That is a very important key element.
I would add that these changes in the European Union's representation may also make it possible to resolve the issue of the distribution of voting rights and thus of the influence of the emerging economies and developing countries within the governing body of the International Monetary Fund. We feel that the representation of the emerging economies should be in better proportion to their economic weight. It is also necessary for the countries with the biggest populations but the smallest economies, in other words the developing countries, to have much greater voting rights than they currently do, for the simple reason that they are the 'beneficiaries' of the International Monetary Fund's policies. That is why the report advocates increasing the number of basic votes: in any event, this is one of the possibilities to explore in the immediate future.
The second point we are emphasising relates to the issue of the legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund's interventions, particularly when the scope of those interventions is becoming ever wider. We favour improving the transparency of the International Monetary Fund and the way it works. I am thinking in particular of the recruitment of experts and of the need to diversify their profiles, so that they can more easily adapt their recommendations to the diversity of the situations they encounter.
The final point, which is just as tricky, relates to the way in which we can assess the structural adjustment policies and the International Monetary Fund's recommendations over a number of years. Today, the Fund is much criticised for the implementation of some of its recommendations, for its macroeconomic doctrine and for its rather too strict application of the Washington consensus. That is what led us to call on it to demonstrate greater flexibility and to find the best way of ensuring that the local authorities and countries concerned establish poverty-reduction strategies. This seems to us to be a very important step.
We have also suggested that some of the Fund's interventions have not been infallible if you look at the results obtained, the social costs of the structural adjustment plans, or the spread, or even reappearance, of crises. We have emphasised these points to encourage the Fund to alter some of its choices as part of its strategic review."@en1
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