Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-04-07-Speech-3-018"
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"en.20100407.4.3-018"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I must admit, when I heard Mr Van Rompuy’s speech, I asked my neighbour, Mr Lambsdorff, to pinch me, because I had the feeling that either I was not in the real world or the President of the European Council must not be. I say this because, in my view, the only positive that resulted from the most recent summit was the fact that an end was put to the very ignoble bickering between Paris, Berlin and Brussels – also involving the ECB – in connection with the questions of whether there would be any help granted to Greece at all, how Greece could be helped, whether there was a need for a European Monetary Fund and whether or not the IMF should be called in. Ultimately, the result was the horse-trading that Mr Verhofstadt has already very ably described.
I also do not understand how you can say that what was agreed at the summit is already helping Greece, as the interest rate that Greece has to pay today – I have just checked this again – is not 6%, but 7%. The rate thus went up immediately after the Council’s decision. How it is possible to pull the wool over people’s eyes about European solidarity as much as clearly happened in the Council, I simply cannot understand.
I also think that a very strange, subliminal signal was sent to Greece there, as what was described during and after the Council meeting, during and after the summit, as a safety net really is no safety net at all. If it were a net, it would have to bear weight. Yet when it comes to Greece, it was agreed that the country’s situation must reach rock bottom before Brussels would be ready to actually help. In Germany there was a feeling, when Chancellor Merkel came back from Brussels, that she wanted to show the Greeks what it is like to be at rock bottom before she would be willing to actually help them. We get the impression that this is more a case of teaching a harsh lesson, but we do not get the impression that teaching harsh lessons is what could help the European Union at the moment.
This very negative energy towards Greece goes hand in hand with the decision not to get involved in solving the problems in Greece. Everything that now has to happen in terms of budgetary consolidation, what areas have to be cut back in terms of public debt, how public services have to be made more efficient, how tax evasion has to be combated, how the corruption in Greece is to be tackled, is being left to the IMF, while Brussels refuses to get involved. This behaviour, to my mind, is not right.
We need to be clear, one more time, what Greece actually teaches us – namely that we are being brought face to face with the weaknesses in our Treaties, and those in the Treaty of Maastricht in particular. If I analyse these weaknesses, I do not reach the conclusion that we should be mutually agreeing not to get involved at this point. Instead, I conclude that more mutual responsibility and more solidarity must be accompanied by mutual intervention. The time has simply come – in addition to what Mr Verhofstadt had to say about Eurobonds and the mechanisms for financial support – when we need to talk about the next reform steps. Mr Van Rompuy, if your task force – in Germany it is constantly referred to as an
or working party, which sounds a little more restrained – kicks this much-needed reform into the long grass, I actually foresee nothing other than a crisis for Europe as a whole heading our way after the Greek crisis. It is inescapable that we must coordinate our economic policy, our tax policy, how we draw up our public budgets, how we ensure competitiveness, with each other much more and that we must assume joint responsibility. Yet the summit failed to secure all of this and I believe it also failed to provide rudimentary undertakings.
When it comes to Europe 2020 – the climate – if we are to take this as the proof of success or failure, what is Connie Hedegaard actually supposed to take to Bonn in May? Is she supposed to go empty-handed? Does she actually have to go to Bonn with what she is being given to bring to the table? It is embarrassing! It is once again the time for Lady No – Chancellor Merkel – to strut her stuff. It is so embarrassing that the already weak socio-political goals that Mr Barroso put forward have been watered down once again by Germany, by Chancellor Merkel.
There has thus been so much negative energy from Germany! I have read that many Members found themselves wishing that they had Helmut Kohl back when this was happening. I have to say, I was not one of them. There is a somewhat different memory that I still have of the Kohl years, and then, too, Europe was not everything. What I would like to see is for the political knowledge in Europe’s capitals that it is necessary to join forces in these days of globalisation and the global crises to finally be converted into a common policy.
Mr Verhofstadt, I am happy to accept your call for more work on Europe 2020. So far, after all, three groups in this House have worked exclusively on this."@en1
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