Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-25-Speech-3-428"
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"en.20070425.40.3-428"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in our opinion, this report takes us in quite the wrong direction. It squanders the opportunity to support an urgently essential change of course. It levels not a word of criticism at the policy of the European Central Bank, which is geared exclusively to price stability and thereby curbs and strangles the growth potential of the EU. The report merely recommends to the authors of the Member States’ budgetary policies that they make spending cuts in order to lower their deficits. Not a word does it say about the ruinous tax competition in the European Union that has been further fuelled by more cuts in business taxes. In Germany we are currently experiencing another round in these dumping stakes.
It is perfectly obvious that public finances in the Member States would be far healthier if people of wealth and property, and above all the multinational corporations with their huge profits, were finally required to pay their fair share instead of receiving more and more tax breaks.
There is no shortage, on the other hand, of proposals in the report for a neo-liberal approach to regulatory policy. For example, it calls for a restructuring of public expenditure with the aid of new public-private partnerships, even in the education sector. Come hell or high water, another key area of our services of public interest is to be sacrificed to the profit motive.
The report calls on Member States to declare new public debt unconstitutional or unlawful by 2015; this, too, is downright foolhardy. If such a ban were enforced, it would strangle any attempt to pursue a budgetary policy.
This report represents a wasted opportunity to support a European policy for development based on social justice and solidarity. For this reason, my group will be voting against it."@en1
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