Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-18-Speech-2-269"
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"en.20081118.29.2-269"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the European Commission, ladies and gentlemen, the current financial crisis does not, as some people have said, constitute the defeat of capitalism but is well and truly the result of a political error, that is, the inadequacy of rules and controls on the quality of financial products in the US since the 1990s.
Europe must not deviate from this path. Europe, united, showed that it was able to find solutions to the crises and to help our fellow citizens to overcome this crisis, which will continue to pose huge problems for us during the coming months. I would say to you quite simply that Europe must be united, Europe must be strong, and above all, Mr President of the Commission, that we have felt the symbiotic relationship between the different institutions, Parliament, which I will mention first, the Commission and the Council. That is how we will succeed and set an example to our fellow citizens.
It is the result of a lack both of market transparency and of an effective financial markets monitoring body. The centre-right political family is not and never has been in favour of a financial system without rules or arbitrators; we are now paying very dearly for the economic and social consequences of this. What we, the centre-right, advocate for the global economy is the European model of a social market economy, which has proved itself. What we, the centre-right, are asking is that, in difficult times, we focus our attention on the situation of people who work and who save, and on that of entrepreneurs, and especially of small and medium-sized enterprises, who take risks every day to create growth and jobs.
We will only guarantee a future for them if we stand up for our model of society and if we maintain the conditions for a free, fair and transparent market, conscious of our responsibilities and faithful to our values.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to express my Group’s great satisfaction that, in this crisis, as in the Georgian crisis this summer, Europe, when it wishes, has a presence in the world, makes itself heard and influences its partners. What I mean here is that Europe, which supports a model of society that is unique in the world and which puts people at the heart of that model of society, is a major tool in the context of globalisation.
The Council Presidency with Mr Sarkozy, supported by the Commission and its President, Mr Barroso, have shown that there can be a common, consistent approach by the 27 Member States, even on very sensitive and complex matters, and that Europe can have an influence on the world if it tries to stand united.
It was thanks to repeated requests from the Council Presidency and the Commission President that the G20 meeting was made possible. This meeting of the richest countries and the emerging economic powers was both a symbolic and a historic event, but it also resulted in concrete measures that our Group strongly supports. The G20 has, indeed, identified the causes of the problem, worked out a strategy and planned a timetable. Disgruntled people say that it is not enough and that it is too late. I have some questions myself, such as why in Europe did we not pre-empt the crisis when the warning signs were already there last year? Why did our supervisory authorities not monitor more closely the quality of US financial products? We have to have an answer to the question of what happened in our big banks, where the top floor did not know what was going on with our computer-game players on the third floor.
It is our duty now to take action to stimulate our economy, to stimulate growth and thus to limit the impact of this crisis on social cohesion. We must simplify the internal market, invest in research, strongly support our SMEs and help families in difficulty. We must do all that without putting a strain on public finances, for example, by considering Euro-bonds as an additional source of funding and by keeping up the impetus of reforms undertaken at national level, which are now more necessary than ever.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of a historic crisis, global governance has made an advance that is also potentially historic. We must go further, while guarding against the danger of protectionism, which is always detrimental to the poorest countries in the world.
It is in times of crisis that we can take brave measures for the future. Mr President of the Commission, it is in a time of crisis that we can change some rules, and only during a time of crisis because, after the crisis, everyone forgets very quickly."@en1
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