Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-17-Speech-1-072"
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"en.20081117.21.1-072"2
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"Mr President, let me congratulate Mr Lundgren on his remarks and also challenge Mr Ryan of the UEN Group, who tells us that the stability provided by the euro has been an enormous boon to Ireland. If he had been following recent Irish economic history, he would know that the inflexibility of the euro monetary policy has contributed to serious inflationary problems, especially in the housing market, and that the Irish housing bubble has been much more severe than it need have been if Ireland had been able to control its own monetary policy.
We were offered great benefits with the euro; we were offered ease of travel, growth and efficiency, and transfers of money between Member States would suddenly become easier. But this has not happened. Yes, we have got the ease of travel, but we have not seen the growth and efficiency, and I believe that it is nearly as difficult and expensive to transfer money between euro-zone states as it ever was.
Those of us who had doubts about the euro project have been vindicated. What we have is the wrong interest rate for most countries most of the time. Italy has had the most fearful crisis of competitiveness, with its unit labour costs increasing by 40% compared to Germany. We are told that the euro is a great success because of its strength as a currency. Well, we should go and ask some euro-zone exporters what they think of the strength of the euro. It is doing huge damage to them.
The real test of a currency’s success is the degree of confidence in the market, and that is measured in this case by the bond spreads between euro-zone states. The last time I looked, the bond spread between Greece and Germany was over 150 basis points. This is not sustainable. It shows a total lack of confidence in the euro from the markets. The question for us is not how long can the euro last, but which Member State will leave first."@en1
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