Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-28-Speech-3-014-000"
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"en.20110928.3.3-014-000"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Barroso has given us a realistic description of the situation that the European Union is in. We have been waiting a long time for you, Mr Barroso, the person who stands at the heart of the European Union institution that you represent, finally to take a more aggressive stance and to be prepared to defend the Community method, if necessary, as we have heard today, by fighting for it. I would like to thank you very warmly for this on behalf of my group. It is a good starting point.
This is why I am asking these Heads of State or Government: when will you finally come up with some concrete proposals for regulating the markets? When will you finally put a stop to this devastating speculation involving financial products that no normal person can understand? When will the countless promises that have been made finally be followed up with action? These are the crucial questions.
A dangerous vacuum has formed in Europe because of this behaviour. This vacuum is the result of the governments’ failure to act. You have begun today, which I think is rather late, but I hope not too late, to play your part in filling the vacuum. We in the European Parliament are being called on, together with the Commission, another European institution, to establish the legal foundations for putting in place these market regulations in areas where we can have an influence.
It is completely clear that if I, as a head of government, reduce the pensions of people in Germany, Greece, Finland, Slovakia or wherever, and then say that I have to stabilise the banks, and these are the banks with managers who are saying that they knew nothing about this young man’s speculation and who then go home with compensation amounting to millions, despite their complete lack of awareness, then I can understand why the people are going out onto the streets and demonstrating. I can understand why this is happening.
The vacuum caused by the failure to act and the failure to regulate the markets is being filled by a dangerous mixture of emotions: hopelessness among young people and despair among their parents, who are now beginning to realise that the project which they believed in is no longer delivering what it used to. The result is huge mistrust in the European Union and in the concept of community values. We need to counteract this mistrust by taking clear and specific action.
That is what we have heard today. You are right. The man who can solve this problem is not someone who has been appointed behind closed doors, however nice he may be and even if he is called Herman Van Rompuy. Anyone who wants economic governance in Europe can have it here. It is just over there. Anyone who wants it to be democratically monitored by this Parliament only needs to look at the Treaty of Lisbon. That is where it is described.
What we do not need is for the Member States to act alone, alongside the Treaties. What we must have is a European legal framework. This is a community based on the rule of law and not a random number generator. Anyone who wants this crisis to be resolved must strengthen the institutions of the European Union, because the challenges of the 21st century – the environment, the monetary system, migration – cannot be resolved in the individual Member States, but only by the European institutions presenting a bold and united front. That is the task of the European Parliament. I believe that the overwhelming majority of this House is prepared to do this and the few Members who believe that they need to drum it into us using flags or words that the national state is the right solution are the people who are taking an axe to the social, peaceful future of the next generation. Therefore, I am calling on the pro-European groups to act together.
We are living in an era when the certainties that we have relied on for decades are disappearing. There was the certainty that European integration would continue to make progress. It became obvious as early as 2005, with the votes against the constitution, that this was no longer the case. There was the certainty that the European project was irreversible. That is also no longer the case. There was the certainty of generations of people that Europe would do its share and that their children would have a better life than they had. My parents were sure that I would have a better life than theirs. That was how things were. Generations of people were certain of this. We younger people knew that we would have a better life than our parents. It was obvious and it was within our grasp. Behind all of this was the idea of Europe.
What is the situation like today? Can we say that our children will have a better life than we have had? Our children are the ones who are asking us: How are you planning to make sure that the prosperity that you have enjoyed all your lives will also be there for us?
Countries where more than 50% of young people, some of them highly qualified, are without jobs, are not compatible with the certainty that Europe as it is today is laying the foundations for a return to full employment, for social security and for investment in education which brings results, and parents are investing a great deal in the education of their children. Why is that the case? Is it because the European approach to integration is wrong? I believe we all agree that the idea that Europe, with the institutions created for the purpose, can ensure the continuation of this prosperity by taking joint action from an economic, environmental, social and cultural perspective remains the right one. What is wrong is how the idea is being handled and how it is being managed. There is no crisis in the European idea. There is a crisis in European leadership. This is why the things that you said here today were correct. The intergovernmentalism which is flourishing in the European Union can no longer even be referred to as intergovernmentalism. One of the institutions of the European Union that we never talk about is the Council. The Council itself, the body which represents the governments of the European Union, is being stripped of its powers. You only have to speak to the people who sit on the Council to find this out. Decisions are no longer being made by the Permanent Representatives Committee, by the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) or by the General Affairs sessions in the Council. We are sliding back into a situation where the Member States are acting alone and this is bringing Europe to the brink of collapse.
This is happening even in the light of the challenges which we are facing in the 21st century. We can genuinely compare these methods with those of the Congress of Vienna in the 19th century, when the great powers of Europe, as they have now informed us, want to come together once every six months to debate the issues behind closed doors and then to tell their astonished subjects about the matters that they once again cannot agree on. That, ladies and gentlemen, must not be the future of Europe. This is a patchwork democracy that they want to present us with, where ultimately not even the spirit of the community is responsible for decision making, but rather the political opportunism of the relevant capital city. The political tactics of the party most recently in opposition or in government in a Member State, whether the country is large or small, are ultimately more important than the worldwide stability of the monetary system. That is the crisis in Europe and that is what we must fight against. I believe that we have seen the first signs of that today.
What is the European Union suffering from? It is suffering from the fact that the policies of the Member States who are acting alone are being driven by the markets. By the way, these are the same markets, as you have rightly said, which had to be stabilised with the help of the national budgets a few years ago. When we talk about the markets, we need to be specific. We are referring to banks which have gambled away billions of euros on the basis of the Anglo-American economic model that is still being sold to us today as the perfect solution.
Three years after the most serious banking crisis we have ever seen, we are in the situation of standing by and watching helplessly while a young man in his early thirties gambles away EUR 1.5 billion belonging to a Swiss bank. He sat down at his computer, entered a few numbers and, in a flash, EUR 1.5 billion had disappeared. It is only three years since we last experienced orgies of speculation of this kind. This was a Swiss bank which, I assume, has accounts containing capital that has been taken out of Greece for the purposes of tax evasion. I am absolutely sure of this."@en1
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