Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-25-Speech-3-064"
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"en.20090325.2.3-064"2
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"Mr President, it is difficult not to hide one’s disappointment at the end of this summit.
If self-satisfaction and fiction were instruments of economic recovery, then we might call it a success. I know that the economy is largely about psychology, and that we must try to restore confidence, but, ultimately, when the crisis worsens to the point where all the Member States are plunging further into recession and unemployment is dramatically rising, hearing the Council declare that it is confident about the EU economy’s medium- and long-term prospects and that it is determined to do everything it takes to revive employment and growth, is all the same rather astounding.
Determined to do what? The agenda for this Council has already been expurgated of any proposals that might have related to employment. That was postponed until May. In the end, the May employment summit has itself been transformed during this Council into nothing more than a meeting of the troika. It appears that it was President Sarkozy who succeeded in convincing the other Member States that there was no need to draft proposals making employment a priority of the European Union’s operations. This calls to mind an opt-out that had already been requested previously by other governments, by a UK conservative government, in relation to the entire employment strand of the European treaties.
So, today, Mr Sarkozy is calling for an opt-out from employment policies. What would be worrying is if this approach were to rub off on all the Member States. I am not overly surprised that your Commission, Mr Barroso, which has in some ways sidelined the European social agenda during its term of office, which has created an opt-out in relation to the European Union’s social and employment priorities and which has yielded by obeying that order given just now by a member of your majority, the conservative European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, but I do believe that it is truly disgraceful and that, when it comes to coordinating not only recovery policies but also employment policies, it is the workers who are ultimately going to pay the price for this non-Europe.
A work of fiction, too, are these EUR 400 billion that you are adding up, as they are the sum not only of national recovery plans but above all of policies that are not even national recovery policies since they are just infamous economic stabilisers, that is, the increase in social expenditure linked to the increase in unemployment. You have put a further EUR 5 billion on the table, but it has pained you to do so.
I therefore believe that, on the contrary, we now need a real recovery plan like the one being introduced by the United States, which has put more than USD 780 million on the table, and coordination of the efforts made to support workers coping with the crisis. We also need demand, which is another factor that will prove far more effective than self-satisfaction when it comes to reviving growth, and to restoring confidence and the dynamism of our economy."@en1
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