Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-07-15-Speech-3-060"
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"en.20090715.5.3-060"2
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Mr President, some important questions have been asked; I shall try to answer them very briefly.
We have mainly national budgets. So I share your approach to have a more coordinated European plan, namely to get out of this crisis and to build this kind of smart green growth we want; but at the same time we have to accept that we have 27 national budgets, we have 27 finance ministers, we have 27 national banks apart from our European Central Bank, and it is very important to reinforce the euro and to have economic policies and financial policies that are sustainable. If not, we will put the euro, one of the great successes of European integration, at risk.
Finally, on the question of climate change, once again we can always have more ambition. But for me it was very important that Prime Minister Reinfeldt was with me recently in L’Aquila, when we heard the Secretary-General of the United Nations say: ‘You are the locomotive of the world’. We can always have more ambition, but the European Union is leading the fight against climate change in the world.
No one is being more ambitious than we are, so of course I would expect at least a word of recognition in terms of the work done by this Commission, together with our Member States, to put forward ambitious proposals. Let us now try to convince others, because we need others – because the problem of climate change is not just a European problem, it is a problem for our planet. With your support I believe we can achieve success at the Copenhagen Conference.
Firstly, Mr Schulz’s important question regarding the treaties. He referred, in particular, to the Commission’s role as guardian of the treaties. We in the Commission believe that there should be respect for the treaties in force. The treaty in force is the Treaty of Nice. All of you who are sitting here were elected under the Treaty of Nice. Obviously, if the President of the Commission is elected now, he will be elected as you were, under the Treaty of Nice.
That being said, we are going to have – I hope – the Treaty of Lisbon. The necessary adjustments will have to be made as regards the composition of Parliament, which will no longer be the same with the Treaty of Lisbon, since there will be certain changes, and the same will have to be done for the Commission. Nonetheless, the European Council adhered to every aspect of your report – the Dehaene report – which was adopted by an overwhelming majority. On the subject of the European Council, before formalising its decision, it carried out consultations, which also took into account – and this is a real first – the result of the European elections, not to mention the fact that there had been a candidate supported by a political force.
The task now is to gain the approval of the European Parliament. I should like to repeat today what I have already said in a letter sent to the President of the European Parliament: I am ready to discuss the content of the guidelines for the next Commission with any political group that wishes to discuss them. In any case, that is my position as regards institutional matters.
On a political level, I should like to stress a very important point. I believe that it is important to link the election of the President of the Commission to the democratic election that has taken place, your election. You have been elected by virtue of the Treaty of Nice, and it is my view that the President of the Commission should also have this legitimacy, which should in a way result from this democratic election.
Furthermore, in view of the economic and financial crisis – and I believe that those who are in favour of a strong Europe and who want a strong Commission will no doubt agree – the matter of Presidency of the Commission should not be left unresolved now pending the final ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, which we all want – at least the majority of us do – when we do not know when that treaty will come into force. Leaving the European Commission and its Presidency in a state of suspense when there is an economic crisis, a financial crisis and a social crisis, and when we have very important negotiations ahead of us in Copenhagen, does not seem very wise to me. Be that as it may, it is up to the European Parliament to decide, and I am ready to enter into a democratic debate as, in fact, I did five years ago.
On the second question about finance and the economy and what Mr Verhofstadt said: we can all have more ambition, and on that matter let me tell you that I share your ambition. But we cannot say that we did not adopt a European economic recovery plan, and that was the maximum that our Member States accepted.
The European Commission proposed more, but that was what our Member States accepted. I want to draw your attention to the fact that some Member States – no less influential at the beginning of this crisis – suggested not to have a coordination plan. Some others suggested a fiscal stimulus of 1%, and the European Commission came immediately to the proposal of 1.5%, and in fact the automatic stabilisers were around 5%. Apart from that, we took those important decisions in terms of balance-of-payment support to some non-euro-area members and also some initiatives at global level.
So you may count on the Commission to do everything we can do to reinforce the European level and a common approach, let us have no ambiguity about it. But, also, let us be honest with ourselves: we are not the United States of America – we are not an integrated nation state – so of course we have different situations. You cannot ask Germany and Latvia to do the same thing. We have countries in Europe that are under balance-of-payment support, so of course we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach. We have to have a common approach but with specific national responses, because that is the reality we are facing in European and will face in the near future."@en1
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