Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-18-Speech-2-290"
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"en.20081118.29.2-290"2
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"Madam President, the result of the G20 summit is a reduction in the lowest common denominator. Regulation and transparency are supposed to prevent another financial crisis. However, the specific measures to be implemented are still undecided. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which plummeted people throughout the world into poverty and despair due to its neo-liberal structural adjustment policy, is now due to become the overseer of the global financial market. A departure from the system of global redistribution, which is primarily responsible for the crisis, is not even being attempted. It is paradoxical that up to now the inconceivable amount of EUR 2.5 trillion has had to be found in order to rescue banks throughout the world. However, there has never been such concerted action for any human disaster. With this amount of money we could have combated the most severe poverty in the world and saved the climate.
What are the consequences? A social global economic order must replace the free market economy and the United Nations should play a leading role in this. A new global financial order must promote social welfare policies, stop the process of impoverishment and make progress with respect to ecologically sustainable economic activity. The European Union can play a decisive role in shaping this new order, provided that it demonstrates that the recession, as a consequence of the financial crisis, is being combated successfully by united European action. However, this will only work if the EU puts its own house in order first.
The President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, said earlier, ‘Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary measures’. Correct, but then act with courage. Have the courage to replace the practically obsolete Stability Pact for Europe with an economic and social pact which obliges all the Member States to coordinate their economic and financial policies with each other. Then have courage and show the Commission’s colours at long last, and, with no ifs and buts, put the subject of social justice at the top of the European agenda. Once again, social aspects are not given a high enough priority in the legislative and work programme. Social pressure is only mentioned in a vague manner, as something that one has to respond to in times of economic emergency. Why do you not mention the grave social problems specifically? Why do you not say quite clearly that the ever-widening gap between rich and poor is no longer acceptable? Why do you not say quite clearly that profits being privatised and losses being nationalised is no longer acceptable? I ask myself when the Commission, faced with the drastic situation with respect to unemployment, poverty and inequality, will finally understand that we cannot keep going on as before, as suggested in the work programme. Neo-liberalism has plainly and simply ruined the economy and a wind of change in Europe is long overdue."@en1
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