Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-25-Speech-2-042-000"
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"en.20111025.5.2-042-000"2
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"Madam President, I would like to thank all of the speakers who have expressed their opinion regarding the European Semester. The dominant recurring theme in your statements was the issue of democracy within the entire process and the question of who should really be the decision maker in this process. I frequently have the pleasure of taking part in the sittings of a national parliament, in my own country of Poland. The opinions I hear there are exactly the same, only expressed from a slightly different point of view.
The national parliaments continue to assert that they should be making the ultimate decisions in relation to national issues, since in their opinion, they know what is best for their citizens. This is precisely the objective of the European Semester. On the one hand, as the Commissioner pointed out, the European Parliament is, for the first time, involved in the entire decision-making process. On the other hand, the national parliaments are aware of the opinions of the European institutions regarding the economies of particular countries and the fulfilment of priorities as determined by the European Union. They know the position of their governments on budgetary plans and national reform programmes and, acting in complete autonomy, they decide on the extent and manner of implementation, since it is national parliaments which make the ultimate decisions regarding the structure of state budgets – the most important instruments for implementing macro-economic policy in any particular country. I therefore find it hard to agree with the opinion that the entire process is lacking in democracy and transparency, since the institution which is most influential in the whole process is very much included in it.
It is hard to say whether the whole process, the whole European Semester, is a resounding success or not, since it has not finished yet. We do not know how the national parliaments will accommodate their budgets to EU recommendations concerning the priorities of their countries in macro-economic policy. The objective of the European Semester was, first and foremost, to include national parliaments in the process, to show them and other, mainly national institutions – since they are the ultimate decision makers – future or existing risks to their countries. The aim is to eliminate the macro-economic imbalances that have emerged between the Member States. As outlined by the Commissioner, when monitoring of the entire process was secondary to the process itself, taking place after the budget and the majority of its implementing legislation had been passed, the European Commission and the Council could only indicate to the Member States that the direction that they had taken was wrong, and that certain actions would have a further negative impact on the economic circumstances of a particular country.
The process has now been reversed and the final decision is left to national parliaments, which are the most democratic institutions in the whole process and are most in touch with the issues facing their citizens and the actions that their countries require. In my opinion, therefore, the structure at least of the European Semester is appropriate and there are no grounds for stating that it is lacking in democratic rules. However, we will not be able to assess how it has been used by its primary addressee, the national parliaments, until a number of months have passed."@en1
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