Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-07-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20080507.11.3-027"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I hope not to overrun my time any more than Mr Klinz overran his.
I am not going to talk again about the great success of the euro, both as an institution and as an instrument for stabilising inflation. However, I would like to thank you, Commissioner, and also thank the Commission, for finally having lifted a taboo. After ten years, it is high time that we looked at the aspects that have not worked.
What has not worked, as you have said, is that the growth promised by the euro has not materialised. Worse still, the European Union Member States not in the euro zone have experienced higher growth than those in it. There is therefore a genuine problem with the way in which the euro was constructed with the Maastricht agreement, and we need to address this.
There are three points as far as I can see. The first, which you highlighted, is the need to reform the governance of the euro, with coordination between budgetary policy and monetary policy. It is clear – and I differ from Mrs Berès on this point – that we cannot simultaneously ask for greater coordination between the two and say that the European Central Bank must remain totally independent. Alternatively, this could mean that budgetary policy in turn – and that means the Ecofin Council – should itself become an independent institution that is no longer democratically accountable. That would be completely unacceptable. We therefore need to define the word ‘independent’. Independent from what? From private interests, yes; from national interests, yes; but not from the EU’s budgetary and general economic policy.
The second problem is that Maastricht gave the Council responsibility for exchange rate policy, although the weapon of exchange rate policy is the interest rate, and the interest rate is controlled by the European Central Bank. It therefore needs to be very clearly stated that, when it comes to exchange rates, the European Central Bank must subordinate its interest rate to the exchange rate policy defined by the Council.
The third point is that on the basis of the subprime crisis, we have learned that it is necessary to distinguish between several types of loan. However, this was not in the Treaty of Maastricht. I believe it needs to be very clearly stated that the loans required for sustainable development and for real action to combat climate change must be issued at very low interest rates."@en1
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