Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-22-Speech-3-057"
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"en.20100922.3.3-057"2
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"Mr President, first of all, thank you to all the speakers in the debate. I know that it is a difficult task to respond, but I know that it is also a very hard task to synthesise, in one minute, the points of view that we want to develop. I will therefore not be able to reply to all of the remarks. I would like to make a few comments on just two important topics.
Even this year, we still have a slightly expansionist effect. We have followed an intelligent monetary policy. The markets have always been liquid, so there have been no ruptures of liquidities as in the 1930s. We have followed an interest rate policy where the rates are low enough to ensure that the recovery can take place and that the Member States’ budgets do not suffer too much from very high interest rates.
On budgetary and monetary matters, we have followed a prudent, wise and gradual policy. Why? Not for the pleasure of proceeding – as we are going to do now – with serious budget cuts, not for the pleasure of reducing the debt, but to have lasting economic growth, to have an employment policy which bears fruit. All of these efforts are to bring about employment, to reduce unemployment. There is an eminent social aim in all the efforts that we are making. We are not doing it for the pleasure of reducing debts and deficits. This is only an instrument: the objective, of course, is employment and the reduction of unemployment.
As the Vice-President of the Commission has just said, in order to do all of this in a more social manner, we have integrated the objective of poverty into our objectives for 2020. We had to fight to obtain it. We have integrated an education policy and we are maintaining a cohesion policy. We are maintaining the structural funds, and I hope that we will also maintain them in the financial perspective that we develop, so that living standards can be as balanced as possible within the European Union.
The goal behind all our actions is therefore an eminently social one; all the rest is only instruments. I wanted to say this to you at the end of this debate.
The first topic is foreign policy. We have travelled a long road. We have had the important work of Mr Solana. We forget it too often. I have given you a list, just for the last few months, of the common positions that we were able to develop, with the European Union, on Iran, on the Middle East and on certain trade matters.
However, we also took a step forward, particularly with respect to our position at the G20, the biggest annual global conference. When I came in as a Prime Minister at the European Council, there were still, a year ago, separate meetings of all the Member States which were part of the G20. They would establish a common position among themselves. I asked, demanded in fact – as we have done since then – that there should be a common position of the 27. Even if not all the countries are present at the G20, Mr Barroso and I represent the Union as a Union, and we therefore have a common position.
I can assure you that, during the G8 and G20 meetings, the Member States and the representatives of the Union carry the same message. We also sometimes have positive things and progress, and I would like to stress that, in this respect, there have been such things. I am talking here about the biggest international global conference, the G20.
Are there still problems? Of course! Furthermore, we are still suffering from the effects of the Copenhagen trauma. We had a common position. We had a common message. However, we did not succeed in imposing this, in getting the others to accept our position. The result: everyone loses, because the results are totally unsatisfactory. So, on various points, progress has been made, but we must work more in the right direction.
People have asked me: what will your messages be during the summit with China? I would invite you to read attentively – not in a superficial, but in an attentive way – what was contained in the European Council conclusions. I advise you to do so. Of course, we will not say in the European Council conclusions what strategy we will develop and what balances we will present to our strategic partners, such as our Chinese partners. However, if you read the text, you will notice that there are actually new emphases, and that we will introduce the notion of reciprocity. It is not just us who are reacting in relation to the message of others. We have become ‘askers’ in our relations with a good many of our partners, and so we need this concept of reciprocity.
The European Parliament is involved – even more so since the Treaty of Lisbon – in trade agreements, and completes colegislation with regard to international agreements and international trade agreements. So there is also progress, but we must have more of it. The summit with the US President will be prepared at the October Council. We will agree on the messages that Mr Barroso and I will give to the US President. We will agree in order to be able to speak on behalf of the Union, on behalf of the 27. So, once again, we will go in the right direction, step by step.
My second observation concerns economic policy. In these last two years, we have followed an intelligent economic policy, much more intelligent than in the past. We wasted 10 years. We could have acted in time on the budget and on competitiveness, but we did not do so. It is precisely because of this that we have problems today.
What have we done since the financial crisis? Apart from saving the banks and others, we ran a very risky expansionist policy in 2008 and, in large part, in 2009. It was a risky policy because it added to budget deficits. However, since we have had an upturn in growth – which we believed to be slow at the start of the year – we have initiated a policy of budgetary consolidation, of gradually reducing budget deficits, not immediately, but gradually."@en1
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