Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-20-Speech-3-069"
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"en.20070620.3.3-069"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, in this final speech in the debate I would like once again, on my own behalf and on behalf of the Commission, to congratulate Cyprus and Malta on the efforts they have made to bring us this far and on the efforts they are making to introduce the euro successfully, both for their economy and for their citizens.
With regard to the procedures, I wish to address you directly, Mr Langen. The Commission is not marginalising Parliament or hindering its work in this debate in any way, and it has no desire or reason to do so. Quite the opposite, and I have expressed, and President Barroso has also done so in his letter, the Commission’s and the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs’ total willingness to work with you.
I would like you to listen to me, Mr Langen, because I am telling you and I am repeating what the President of the Commission said in the letter to Mr Poettering and what I said on 7 June in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in your presence – we are entirely willing to share information with you and to forward any information available. But what you cannot ask of the Commission is that it take the view that a country has definitively fulfilled the deficit criterion when the Council has not yet abrogated the excessive deficit procedure. Next year, if Slovakia presents a request, we are going to have that problem again, because Slovakia is currently under an excessive deficit procedure that can only be abrogated – in the event that that abrogation is appropriate once the definitive figures for the 2007 budget have been validated by Eurostat.
We are not therefore going to be able to anticipate, and nor is the Ecofin Council, the decisions on abrogation of the excessive deficit procedure for Slovakia before the time of year that Malta’s excessive deficit procedure has been abrogated.
We can anticipate the convergence report by saying that, if the Ecofin Council approves the derogation, Slovakia will fulfil the criterion. That is a hypothesis. We cannot say in February that Slovakia fulfils the deficit criterion, however, when the abrogation can only be approved in May or June of next year. Likewise, we cannot carry out a rigorous assessment — and you are right to demand that we carry out a rigorous assessment — of whether countries fulfil the Maastricht criteria, the convergence criteria, before we know the spring economic forecasts in May 2008, which cannot be approved or published beforehand by the Commission and its services, because if we anticipate the spring forecasts they will be winter forecasts and they will not provide a view of the economic situation and the economic data for the spring.
I therefore wish to make it clear to this Parliament that next year’s convergence report cannot be anticipated before May. The Commission, Parliament and the Council must therefore talk and agree on a way in which we can work rigorously, coherently and cooperatively in order to come to correct decisions that enable all of us to work rigorously and take decisions at the appropriate time so that the citizens of the next countries to join the 13 current members of the euro zone do not suffer the consequences of a belated decision and of a lack of preparation for the introduction of euro notes and coins.
This is the Commission’s attitude and conviction. There should be an agreement amongst the three institutions. That is desirable. It makes no sense that, for each enlargement of the euro zone, we should be discussing the procedures rather than the countries that are entering and the beneficial consequences for their citizens. We must resolve this problem, but we will only resolve it by maintaining an attitude of cooperation amongst the three institutions and taking account of the objective limitations with which the institutions must take this decision.
I believe that this demonstrates once again that the euro zone is not a closed club and that joining the euro is not just an obligation for the Member States, but an excellent opportunity for those who wish to share the single currency with 318 million other Europeans and for the countries that already belong to the Economic and Monetary Union.
I therefore believe that it is a good decision to support the entry of Cyprus and Malta into the euro, as Mr Langen’s report does.
I would like to make two comments on compliance with the criteria. In his speech, Mr Langen called into question the way in which Cyprus and Malta fulfil the criteria or the way in which the Commission’s convergence report has assessed the compliance with those criteria.
I must say that the abrogation of the excessive deficit procedure for Malta, which took place at the last Ecofin Council on the proposal of the Commission, is a necessary condition in order for Malta to fulfil the Maastricht criterion on this point and the Commission’s convergence report of 16 May said that, if the Ecofin Council approved the abrogation of the excessive deficit procedure, Malta would comply. We have done that in order not to delay the convergence report, because if not we would have had to wait until 5 June in order to publish the convergence report and you would have had even less time to debate it.
The assessment of compliance conditional upon definitive approval is therefore intended to help the work of Parliament and the Council, not to hinder it.
So to the figures: Cyprus and Malta’s deficit and debt figures notified within the context of the excessive deficit notification procedures that take place twice a year, on 1 April and 1 October, are as reliable – having been analysed by Eurostat, which published its opinion on 23 April – as those of the other Member States. Eurostat has no reservations regarding the deficit and debt figures notified.
There is no foundation for calling into question the figures for Cyprus and Malta and not calling into question the figures for France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Sweden, Denmark or any other Member State. No foundation whatsoever.
There are difficulties with other figures: there are difficulties with the quarterly financial account figures in the national accounts, with the unemployment figures at this time of the enquiry into the German workforce and with the French figures, but that is everyday statistical work, and if Parliament wants to give Eurostat more resources, they will be welcome. If Parliament wants to support the work of Eurostat, the honourable Members know that I, as the Commissioner responsible for Eurostat, am always grateful for Parliament's support of the Commission and of Eurostat, but I do not wish there to be any doubt about the validity and the quality of the figures on the basis of which we are assessing whether Cyprus and Malta fulfil the convergence criteria."@en1
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