Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-17-Speech-3-364"
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"en.20081217.24.3-364"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we are in a market economy and, from where you sit, I am sure you agree with that statement. The rules of the game in the market economy are what they are.
I do not believe, therefore, that anyone thinks that the credit system, the financial system or the economic system in general would work better if all the decisions made by the economic operators and, particularly in this case, the financial operators, were made instead by the national ministries or in Brussels, in one of the many buildings in which the European institutions carry out their work.
As a result, it has to be the banks that decide whether or not to give credit. The fact is that, when the banks rely on public money and public guarantees, they also have to comply with a number of conditions. The national support schemes for the banking sector vary as regards the kind of conditions, depending on the circumstances, the characteristics and the kind of instrument being used in each individual country.
For our part, in the European Commission, we have approved the deposit guarantee schemes submitted by each Member State to ensure that they comply with the rules on competition and state aid. We are currently finalising approval of the most recent national recapitalisation plans.
The Commission has adopted and published some cross-cutting standards explaining the criteria that we are using in these exceptional circumstances to analyse whether those plans comply with the rules of the Treaty. We in the Commission have set a deadline of six months in all cases, because we will then have to – and we will want to – find out what has happened in the six months since our initial authorisation of those plans.
If the taxpayers’ money – the citizens’ money – provided through those aid schemes is being properly used and the difficult economic circumstances are still affecting the operation of the financial markets, we may authorise the schemes to continue. If the economy has improved – as we all hope it will – or if the money is not being used for the purpose for which it was authorised, we shall also act accordingly and adopt the necessary decisions.
Taxpayers’ money is being risked to improve the operation of the financial circuits and the credit markets and circuits, and we are not prepared to allow it to be misspent or used without producing good enough results.
With regard to the second question, in the aid programmes for small- and medium-sized enterprises, the European Investment Bank acts through intermediaries in each Member State. It is therefore the intermediary or intermediaries in each Member State that pass on the credit and financial facilities, based on the support programmes that we have established, to the productive fabric, namely the SMEs. These intermediaries or financial agents must also provide the information that you referred to."@en1
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