Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-20-Speech-3-033"
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"en.20101020.3.3-033"2
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"Mr President, as we have heard, the task force chaired by Herman Van Rompuy has now produced its report. It contains proposals for crisis resolution and budgetary discipline: in other words, only part of the picture.
I would emphasise that these are only proposals. I am sure the ECOFIN Ministers who dominated the proceedings of that task force would like it to be the end point, but it is not. It is the beginning. We are right at the very beginning of the legislative process. I hope all of the institutions will realise that the work of the European Parliament on the Commission’s legislative proposals will now need to be conducted in a fully democratic process with the Council.
The task force said that its aim was to achieve a quantum leap in terms of more effective economic governance. I think what it is proposing is actually more like a potential step back in terms of prosperity and well-being for Europe. It is proposing a strengthening of instruments, but only instruments that focus upon fiscal discipline. That is a problem. Economic coordination is more than fiscal discipline and economic union will not be achieved as long as that balance is not properly recognised. It will inevitably lead to distorted economic policies which take insufficient account of other worthwhile policy objectives for the conduct of macro-economic policy, and by that I mean growth, investment and employment.
President Barroso, we do not need another task force to come up with a balanced set of policy measures. We need the Commission to use its right of initiative to bring forward the proposals that will address growth, investment and employment.
Regarding the proposals now on the table, I believe that Parliament has an enormous responsibility in the coming months. We need to make some changes along the lines of the Feio report to be voted on today. I think we need three main changes there: the excessive balances procedure has to be broad enough to cover labour markets, including unemployment levels, and therefore the Employment Council needs to be included wherever relevant; the qualitative assessment of public debt levels and developments in the corrective arm of the Stability and Growth Pact should pay full attention to levels and developments in public investment as well; and the linkage with 2020 throughout the new system needs to be explicit and operationalised as fully as possible.
On governance, I would mention only two points at this early stage. The Council needs to guide the system and assume ultimate political responsibility throughout, as well as ensuring the due involvement of all relevant Council formations – not just ECOFIN – wherever that is necessary.
Finally, the European Parliament needs to be fully involved throughout the process in order to ensure the highest level of democratic legitimacy. Just look at the proposal for the European Semester to see to what extent the role of the Parliament is missing in all of this. Some of us across the political groups are working on strengthened proposals for parliamentary involvement. I hope they will be accepted by the other institutions to give this process the democratic legitimacy it needs."@en1
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