Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-04-05-Speech-2-058-000"
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"en.20110405.3.2-058-000"2
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"Madam President, Mr Van Rompuy, there is one thing in your conclusions that we all clearly agree on: rigorous governance. No one can be against that. However, rigour should not mean zero deficit or austerity, but rather intelligent spending.
The Union’s necessary competitiveness should be improved, that goes without saying, but wage cuts and social expenditure cuts should not be the only adjustable variable. Competitiveness is gained by investing in qualifications, research, excellence and major infrastructure.
Everyone here agrees on the fact that the Union and the euro are at a turning point. We are faced with having to choose between, on the one hand, a model of turning in on ourselves, where each country compares its competitiveness with the neighbouring Member State, where it looks at its rating on the financial markets and at the lowest possible contribution it can make to the European budget, and, on the other hand, a model based on solidarity – the only acceptable model – in which social standards are raised, in particular by upholding the position of social dialogue and of unions, with minimum social requirements across Europe and wage-indexing mechanisms that are protected, and in which solidarity between generations is guaranteed by a pension system which provides enough to live in dignity, as Parliament has recently stated.
Member States should be free from the pressures of financial markets thanks to a European Central Bank with a strengthened role, and we should have better regulated rating agencies, a solidarity-based model which guarantees genuine social and territorial cohesion in Europe, notably through an increased European budget, with a fundamental reform of its own resources and with the introduction, at last, of the tax on financial transactions.
Your conclusions are based on a distinct ideology that says that debt and deficit are responsible for the recession, when the real cause is the irresponsibility of financial players. Without a change in the ideological prism within the Council, we will not come out of the recession, and nor will we restore citizens’ trust. There is a clear democratic deficit today, and if the Council and the Commission continue to make proposals that fail to take Parliament’s opinion into account, our fellow citizens will reject our project even more."@en1
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