Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-25-Speech-4-018"
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"en.20100325.3.4-018"2
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"Mr President, since I would like Commissioner Rehn to understand me loud and clear, I will speak in English.
I would like, starting from where we are today, to take a look forward. Where are we? We have huge and unsustainable public deficits and, mind you, the Greens do not support this kind of deficit.
Second, we cannot ignore the fact that we already have huge and deepening social inequalities. 16% of Europeans below the poverty level is not a small figure; 40% of young Spaniards under 25 unemployed is not a small figure, and I could carry on.
Then we are facing climate change and resource scarcity, and all this means there is a need for investment in infrastructure, in education, in research and innovation, etc.
So what we believe is that we should really switch gear.
Herman Van Rompuy said, after the February summit, that coordination of macro-economic policy needs to be considerably increased and improved. Of course. What does that mean? It means, of course, that in terms of budgetary expenditure, we need to have more peer review, more ex ante control. Greece has 4% of its GDP going to military spending. They have got an air force that is as big as the Luftwaffe. I mean, how come? It is such a tiny country and they are arming themselves like hell.
But if we just look at the expenditure side, we will not succeed. We need to look, and to take a hard look, at coordinating our tax revenue because, what do we need to do? We need to rebalance tax income away from labour income towards other forms of income, including capital income. We need to make sure that we have an effective corporate contribution – effective, not just on paper – and that means CCCTB country-by-country reporting, etc.
We need to implement the financial transaction tax; we need to implement the carbon tax, both to shift behaviour and to provide income. And we cannot do that just by asking countries to coordinate their policies. We need more integration. If we do not do that, our governments will prove incapable of reconciling the need to balance budgets and to meet social needs and investment needs.
So I believe that Europe is now at a critical juncture. The choice is between a higher degree of integration, not just coordination, and decline. The lesson that I take from Copenhagen is not just that we missed the climate agreement. It is that Europe has proved to be irrelevant if it is not acting together. We spend too much time coordinating, too little time acting together. So that would be our contribution to this debate."@en1
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