Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-11-11-Speech-3-271"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20091111.21.3-271"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, firstly I would like to say that I fully agree with the conditions approved by the European Parliament; that is what the Commission is doing: when it lends money to those three Member States making use of the balance of payments facility, what the Commission does is to take money lent by the markets, and to lend it subject to exactly the same conditions – which are conditions much more favourable for those countries than they could obtain if they went to the market directly to borrow – and to lay down some conditions to ensure that they pay us back the money, but we take into account the four conditions that you mentioned and which this Parliament adopted. We are fully in agreement with them.
When the balance of payments facility is used, however, one should not equate – and it seems to me, from what I understood, that in some of the speeches you were trying to do so – a utilisation of budget resources (Structural Funds, Cohesion Fund, programme of another type, aid) with a loan to solve a financial problem in a country.
Latvia’s problem, which is the same problem as Hungary and Romania experienced, is that it has to have recourse to this balance of payments facility because it cannot have recourse to the markets to borrow in order to finance its financial requirements. That is the problem. We are not talking about a programme for a specific activity or for some specific programmes; we are talking about some countries that have a financial difficulty. In part, of course, this derives from the crisis, but as a result of past mismanagement, it is much greater than in other countries where conditions are, objectively speaking, similar.
Please do not blame the Commission or the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers for mismanagement by some governments in certain Member States. That is not our responsibility; our responsibility is to try to help solve a financial problem. In part, this financial problem is a balance of payments problem that has to do with the indebtedness of the private sector, which has to refinance certain amounts or pay back certain debts and does not have the ability to finance itself to carry out these transactions and, in part, at times, it is a public sector need.
In the case of public sector need, to finance its public debt, there is more scope to impose specific conditions, and we do impose them, believe me. The day before yesterday, here in Brussels, I was still trying to convince a representative of Latvia’s Government to make the measures to be included in the budget for 2010 more progressive. However, please do not ask the Commission to compel a country to adopt a tax reform which that country does not wish to adopt; for better or for worse, and you know this as well as I do. We do not have that ability.
What is our alternative, then, as representatives of European citizens? To leave the country to collapse into insolvency? To default on its external commitments, whether these are public or private debts? For these financial problems to force the country to devalue its currency by 25 or 30%, which would immediately impoverish families, businesses and the public sector, with debts in foreign currency? I am sure that you do not want that, and nor do I. These are the conditions within which we are working.
I share all your analyses: those of Mr De Rossa, those of Mr Cercas, those of Mrs Berès, all of you; of course I share them. The situation on the ground in a country such as Latvia or Romania, however, at the moment, is more complicated than that. Please, put yourselves in the place of someone who has to act in the name of all of you to decide whether or not to lend to a country that cannot borrow on the markets, as the majority of the Member States can, or as the most industrialised countries can. That is the situation. That is what we are trying to resolve, while meeting the four conditions that you have imposed and which I endorse."@en1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples