Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-09-Speech-2-196"
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"en.20100209.13.2-196"2
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"Madam President, we are in an unprecedented situation in the euro area, because this is the first global financial crisis since the euro has been in existence. What is happening in the euro area and in the whole of the European Union is that although it did not cause the crisis and it is not where the crisis began – we know that it began in the United States – we have suffered its effects just as much as the country where it began.
To conclude, Madam President, I believe that in this case, it has been demonstrated that it has been absolutely vital to coordinate and strengthen the euro area and that it continues to be a place where there is significant monetary and economic protection. It has been demonstrated that the euro area needs to be strengthened and that it will be possible to expand it when there are countries that can meet the requirements, but that expansion is also a positive thing.
Also – and I will now conclude – it is essential that we move towards integration and economic convergence in the European Union. There are still disparities between the economic positions in the Union. We need to move from monetary union towards true economic union, as stated in the treaties. The treaties talked about economic and monetary union, and it was described as such, but monetary union was implemented before economic union.
The coordination of economic, employment and social policies is laid down in the treaties. It is an obligation and it is one of the principles, one of the lines or ideas raised by the Spanish Presidency. Coordinated public policies have been effective when they have truly been coordinated. This was the case when the European Economic Recovery Plan was made, when fiscal policies were implemented around maintaining the credibility of the Stability and Growth Pact, which was vital. It was also the case when coordinated financial policies were undertaken, for example, bank guarantees and increasing deposit guarantee funds. In short, it is about what economists call ‘economies of scale’ also being done at a political level, because at a political level, significant coordination produces good results.
This is the Council’s vision of this difficult situation, but we are coming out of it and we need to emerge from it much more strongly and solidly. This will undoubtedly be one of the central objectives of the informal meeting of the European Council on Thursday:
Obviously, the situation of public deficits has arisen as a result of the crisis and of positive action by governments to prevent, among other things, the collapse of the financial system. These deficits inevitably mean that governments have less room for manoeuvre in terms of their budgetary policies.
The debate concerns the economic situation, the monetary situation and the social situation. Regarding the economic situation, it must be said that the euro area as a whole has now come out of the recession and it has also avoided the risk of deflation, although there are obvious disparities in the rates of growth and growth is still not entirely sustained. We need to ensure that growth is sustained and consolidated, which is a fundamental objective of economic policy throughout the euro area, but we are no longer in a recession. The euro area as a whole is no longer in recession.
It is, however, true that job creation is falling behind. This year, there will still be severe unemployment throughout the euro area, but we are on the right path towards growth. In fact, this is one of the matters that is going to be dealt with in the informal meeting of the European Council on Thursday: the importance of growth in order to return to sustained growth, maintain the European social model and begin to create jobs once again, good-quality jobs.
Regarding the monetary system, despite the fact that there is tension in the securities markets, the European Union and its institutions have acted correctly. The European Central Bank has done its job well and is continuing to do so by gauging the strategies for bringing us out of the crisis. It is therefore reasonable for the stimuli not to be abandoned during 2010. In fact, the European Central Bank is gradually phasing out those stimuli, and is already removing some of the measures that it adopted. An example of this is removing the cash advantages granted to banks, which has been possible because the credit markets have gradually returned to normal.
It should also be pointed out that the Eurogroup and Ecofin have managed the crisis well, and have also created a supervision structure for the financial system that is going to be debated in this House. We hope that this will be one of the central elements of the political debate during the term of the Spanish Presidency.
Regarding the social situation, we are obviously suffering the consequences of high unemployment throughout the euro area. Although there are also disparities in unemployment levels across the euro area, it is undoubtedly the main issue for Europeans at the moment. They want employment, they want a return to growth, which will create employment. Not the volatile, precarious employment that may have existed in some countries of the euro area, but good-quality employment.
Among other things, it should also be pointed out that it was obviously high unemployment that triggered the ‘automatic stabilisers’, which resulted in unemployment aid and subsidies. In turn, these influenced the deficits that the Member States have as a result of our political and social system, which protects those in the most vulnerable situations, such as those who lose their jobs.
In the future – and this is another subject that will be dealt with on Thursday at the informal European Council meeting – there will have to be a policy of employability, which we call ‘Europe 2020’, as a model of growth and creating quality jobs."@en1
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