Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-08-Speech-3-075"
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"en.20081008.14.3-075"2
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Mr President, Minister, ladies and gentlemen, I will start with the end of Mr Jouyet’s speech. As President Barroso said in his opening speech, the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty is essential in order for us to move forward with European integration, especially at a time like this. Some of you have mentioned aspects of external action and the common foreign and security policy: Georgia. The Lisbon Treaty will enable us to increase the effectiveness and the intensity of our action in such important matters for our own security and defending our values outside our borders as in the case of Georgia and other countries.
The Commission, like the Council and Parliament, is satisfied with the speed with which the European Central Bank and other central banks have acted today, with a coordinated reduction in interest rates, which should relieve some of the tension in the market.
I fully agree with Mr Purvis on the need to adopt measures, each within our responsibilities, to facilitate the recovery of the interbank market. This is essential. We cannot contemplate only having the central banks as a source of liquidity in the functioning of the financial system in the future and, of course, the Commission – and I am responding in particular to a speech by Mrs in't Veld – said in front of the Heads of State and Government in Paris on Saturday, and said again yesterday at the Ecofin meeting, that when it comes to regulating State aid, the Treaty has sufficient clauses and provisions to deal flexibly with compliance with competition rules and the rules on State aid in a situation such as we are facing now.
Either today or tomorrow, my colleague, Commissioner Kroes, is going to publish, as she announced yesterday in the Ecofin Council, guidelines on how the Commission considers that the margins for flexibility in the Treaty can be used on this specific point, while avoiding discrimination between different solutions and different types of aid.
She will also refer – and some of you have also mentioned this – to the implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact. We revised it in 2005 and from then onwards, as I believe I also said here the other day in another debate, the consensus on the implementation of the revised Pact has been total, one hundred percent. Yesterday, again, the Ecofin Council, as on Saturday in the meeting in Paris, unanimously agreed to say that the current Pact, as revised in 2005 – and Parliament also took part in that debate and in that consensus – has sufficient room to manoeuvre to deal with the situations that are beginning to occur and are unfortunately going to continue to occur, such as the increase in public deficits. This can be done within the framework of the established rules, not by putting them aside.
This was clear on Saturday in Paris, it was clear yesterday at the Ecofin meeting, and it is clear here, in today’s debate, and I assure you that the Commission is going to ensure that it is clear from now on, even though we are going to experience very difficult circumstances, not only in the financial system but also in the real economy.
Tomorrow we are going to Washington, to the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF’s forecasts have once again been revised downwards. Our forecasts in a few weeks are going to be revised downwards. This is not just an exercise in economic forecasting, a theoretical exercise; unfortunately, it means less growth, less employment, greater tension in the employment market and, along with the inflationary pressure that we are still suffering from, although it has calmed down in the last two months, it means a loss of purchasing power and difficulties for real citizens.
However, this should not cause us to forget the medium term. It should not cause us to forget the lessons we learned in past crises. I think that, with this spirit, the vast majority of the speeches that I have heard this afternoon reinforce, support and agree with the consensus that we reached yesterday – which I think was a very positive consensus – in the Luxembourg Ecofin meeting.
Some of you have quite rightly mentioned the importance of the debates on energy and climate change that are going to take place in the European Council. The French Presidency supports the Commission’s ambitious package of proposals, which we hope will be adopted and implemented. The Lisbon Treaty will give the European institutions – not just the Commission – increased powers to tackle this very important challenge.
Some of you have quite rightly mentioned immigration, the immigration pact, a commendable initiative by the French Presidency, along with some other Member States. The Commission has also made proposals during recent times on immigration, which have been discussed and adopted, or are being discussed and adopted by the Parliament and the Council. Once again, the Lisbon Treaty will enable the European Union to move forward towards a common immigration policy, which is essential.
Finally, the majority of the speeches have focused, naturally enough, on economic and financial matters, which we are particularly concerned about at the moment.
I agree with you, with the Presidency, and, of course, with the President of the Commission in his opening speech, that we need to step up the concerted action of all of us who have responsibilities in Europe. There are responsibilities in the Commission, without any doubt, there are responsibilities in the Council, there are responsibilities in Parliament, there are responsibilities in the Member States, in the supervisory bodies and in the central banks.
We all need to act in a coordinated way, each according to our responsibilities. For a year, since the beginning of the crisis, the Commission has been developing initiatives to tackle the future of our financial system, with a medium-term vision, as discussed and adopted a year ago by the Council and the Commission, in the informal Council meeting in Oporto and the Ecofin meeting in October last year.
However, the Commission is also actively participating in the short-term, urgent, essential measures that are part of the conclusions of the Ecofin Council yesterday, including a commitment to improve deposit guarantee schemes, which are seriously affected, not by the insecurity of deposits in financial institutions, but by some unilateral initiatives with negative impacts for other countries.
The Commission is cooperating and also working to develop and apply the principles established yesterday in the Ecofin conclusions, which are essential in terms of the way in which the difficult situations in each of the financial institutions should be tackled: through recapitalisation and, in some cases, through other instruments.
The Commission is working, as President Barroso has said, to move forward more quickly than we have been up to now in terms of supervision at European level, at cross-border level, which we obviously need. We have all had experience in recent days of the need for these mechanisms."@en1
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