Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-25-Speech-3-425"
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Schwab’s defence of Mr Lauk’s report was so brilliant and so accurate that I am going to continue broadly in the same vein as him.
Thirdly, I believe that we must rethink our entire system of public spending and revenue in order to make our economies more productive, so that we have more resources, amongst other things in order to meet social welfare spending needs. I believe that we should stop looking at the retirement age as something that represents an obligation and think in terms of a right that opens up the possibility of retiring and orient public finances, since we are talking about public finances, in a way that encourages people to remain in work for longer.
Finally, I believe that we should consider replacing social security contributions, as a fundamental core – practically the only one – of social protection systems, with a system of taxes, essentially value-added tax, which the presidential candidate Sarkozy has brilliantly described as ‘social VAT’ in the debate that is taking place in that country.
I would like once again to congratulate the rapporteur, who is not here today, the person representing him and the Commissioner on having taken up the majority of our positions.
I share Mr Schwab's concern with regard to the progress of public debt. We grew much more last year than in previous years, we have come closer to our growth potential, but public debt remains below the limits that we ourselves set in the Treaty of Maastricht.
According to all of the indicators, we will have good growth next year, but we will grow less than last year, and that means that public debt will continue to cause concern.
I would once again agree with the rapporteur and the Commissioner in saying that this concern is all the more urgent if we take account of the projections on the development of the population, what is known as the ageing of the population, which may be one of the great challenges of the century we have just begun.
Life expectancy is increasing, birth rates are still extremely low, and that means that the working-age population will be smaller and that, therefore, sooner or later, the labour market will contract and, as a result, we will have far more beneficiaries of the system and far fewer people contributing to the social security coffers.
Neither I nor Mr Schwab, who is a Christian Democrat like me, believe that the viability of the social protection system can be called into question. We need to seek foundations to strengthen it, which make it possible for us to fulfil our social obligations.
There are certain recommendations in Mr Lauk’s report that I would like to stress, and I shall add a few of my own.
I agree that we should establish comparable bases for the budgets so that we can make comparisons homogeneous, but I would like us to borrow an accounting technique from the private sector, a form of budget forecasting, in order to take account of the obligations of which we are aware.
It seems to me to be obvious that we should take advantage of good times to reduce public debt further, but we are not doing so, or we are not doing so sufficiently."@en1
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