Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-07-15-Speech-3-049"
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"en.20090715.5.3-049"2
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"Mr President, these are no ordinary times and this will be no ordinary presidency. In addition to the usual legislative work, the Swedish Presidency will have other kinds of highly political challenges to deal with, and no one better to tackle these challenges than Prime Minister Reinfeldt and the Swedish Presidency team.
Concerning climate change, Europe is already the first region in the world to implement far-reaching, legally binding climate and energy targets. I am proud of the way the Commission worked with the last Parliament and the Council to put this legislation in place, and I want to work closely with you and the Presidency in the run-up to Copenhagen.
Our leadership role was very much appreciated in the meetings last week in L’Aquila in the G8, and in the Major Economies Forum. You will have heard about the progress made at these meetings. For the first time, all participants committed to capping the temperature increase at 2°C to respect climate science. This is certainly a welcome step forward, but we should not delude ourselves: our ambition and our commitment are not yet matched by others. Europe is far ahead of the curve in relation to the rest of the world and, frankly, 145 days from Copenhagen, that worries me.
In the coming weeks we will step up our work with international partners to secure clear commitments in Copenhagen. We also need to make progress on the necessary means to support developing countries and boost technology transfer. In September the Commission will put its proposals for financing on the table so that we can build a European consensus and negotiate with others.
The climate change agenda is, of course, closely linked with another priority: energy security. Today, the Commission will adopt proposals to strengthen our rules governing the security of gas supply and reinforcing solidarity between Member States, which I trust the Swedish Presidency will take forward with your support.
These are the headline priorities – and rightly so. But there is plenty of other important work to be done over the next six months. Let me just flag the Stockholm programme, where the Commission has recently tabled an ambitious vision putting the citizen at the heart of our justice, freedom and security policy, balancing security with the protection of civil liberties and fundamental rights.
For most of this decade the European Union has been engaged in internal institutional debates. Changes to our governing Treaty are absolutely necessary to equip the enlarged European Union to work democratically and effectively. I hope that we will see the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in the coming months so that we can put its provisions to work and so that we can move on with the policy agenda I have just outlined.
It is important to discuss procedure, but I believe it is even more important to discuss substance. The Swedish Presidency, as well as the next Spanish Presidency, will have to oversee – hopefully – a complex transition to the new Treaty in which the Commission and Parliament will have to play their full part.
The European Union has constantly reinvented itself, from the initial vocation of healing a war-torn continent to the building of the internal market and then on to the reunification of Europe. During these last 50 years Europe has consistently exceeded expectations, confounding doubts. I am sure that we will also rise to the new challenge we face: laying the foundations for the smart, green economy of the future. We will succeed if we respect the key lesson from half a century of European integration: the European Union advances when all its parts cooperate in a spirit of openness, trust and partnership. The Swedish Presidency programme recognises this; the European Commission stands ready to play its part and so, I am sure, does this Parliament.
Today I want to highlight two of the biggest policy challenges facing the European Union in the next six months: dealing with the economic crisis and negotiating an ambitious international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen.
The worst financial and economic crisis in living memory continues to have devastating effects within our communities and families, with unemployment in particular continuing to rise. Getting the economy back on track remains the top priority. The European Union’s collective action has led to an unprecedented fiscal effort that is producing concrete results.
We have also shown solidarity amongst Member States, for instance by doubling the ceiling for balance of payments support for non-eurozone Member States to EUR 50 billion. We now need to fully implement the recovery package in all its aspects and make sure it translates into the creation of jobs and the promotion of economic activity on the ground.
I believe it is essential to prioritise measures that limit unemployment and get people back to work. Here we can build on the results of the employment summit held in May as part of a Commission initiative with the Czech, Swedish and Spanish Presidencies. We need to put into practice the shared commitment to youth and to employment.
Of course, responsibility for labour market policies lies with Member States, but we can and should use existing European instruments to help Member States keep people in employment and train them for the jobs of the future. That is why the European Commission is about to make a proposal to simplify Structural Fund procedures and waive the need for national cofinancing from the European Social Fund for 2009 and 2010. We will also redeploy resources in order to fund a new microcredit facility for employment and social inclusion. I hope this Parliament will support these proposals.
The Commission proposals building on the de Larosière report I commissioned last October will form the basis for strengthened financial market supervision and regulation. With the proposals already made – many of them already approved by this Parliament and by the Council, some still in our decision-making process – we are indeed taking the lead globally in the reform of the financial international system. We will continue to do so, I am sure, at the G20 in Pittsburgh in September.
Moving all these dossiers forward over the next six months is essential to build a new economy, because – let us make no mistake – the post-crisis economy cannot and will not be the same as the pre-crisis economy.
We need to rebuild our economic model and put the values back at the heart of our social market economy, where they belong. We need to build an economy and a society based on opportunity, responsibility and solidarity, an economy which will have to reinvent new sources of growth because we cannot rely for ever on monetary and fiscal stimulus; a Europe of open and well-performing markets; a Europe of smart, green growth; a Europe with more effective regulation and supervision of financial markets; a Europe that deepens its single market and uses its potential to the full; a Europe that resists the trends for fragmentation or protectionism."@en1
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