Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-16-Speech-3-014-000"
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Mr President, President of the European Council, President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, as I understood it, the debate which brings us here today was to be on governance of the euro area and should therefore not be about the substance in the first instance, but first and foremost it should instead be about our style of work and the dovetailing between our different working methods.
I want our working methods to become more political in all our actions. If the truth be known, after many years’ experience in all things Community, I often see that with finance ministers, and sometimes even prime ministers, texts are endorsed that we have not even prepared or even discussed amongst ourselves. It is a bit like in some European Parliament committees, but with us, it is more …
I had you going there! I was just trying, in vain, to get you out of your overly benevolent shell. Forget it. It was a test.
I want our work to be more political. I want us in ECOFIN, and in the other Council groups, and in the European Council under Mr Van Rompuy’s presidency, to discuss the specific situations of the various Member States in more detail. When recommendations are made to a government, I want that government to be able to say whether or not it agrees and for the others to be able to engage in a virtuous dialogue with the government of that country. We are not a government if we fail to nurture meaningful debate amongst ourselves on the key points of political choices which together we will make but which we will have to apply individually in our different countries.
As for budgetary and macroeconomic surveillance, I want the European Parliament to be as closely involved as possible with our approach. I realise how difficult the Council and the European Parliament found it to agree on the exact content of so-called economic dialogue. However, I want the various presidents of the various Councils to be invited by the European Parliament to discuss the major decisions that have been made by Member States and by the Council of Ministers.
As President of the Euro Group, you know that I will always be willing to come and talk and discuss the various recommendations and decisions that we have made. I am one of those that believe that a Member State facing particular difficulties, a Member State with a huge deficit, a Member State under specific pressure, ought to have the opportunity to come to the European Parliament to put over its own case. It is stipulated that Parliament can invite a Member State – the Member State does not have to come – but if we want to make Europe more mutually supportive, it seems obvious to me that those wanting solidarity and who need to demonstrate their strength must also explain themselves to the European Parliament, if only to gain a better understanding of the brand image and the level of difficulty which the other Member States, and members of Parliament will understand better if a government explains itself live and in colour to the European Parliament.
As for actual governance, President Van Rompuy has explained to you the dovetailing of relations between the Euro Council chaired by Mr Van Rompuy and the Euro Group which I have the honour of chairing. There is no rivalry and no competition between the two of them. The Euro Group still plays a vital role when it comes to the detail of organising day-to-day, or monthly management of economic policy coordination. The Euro Group has to prepare Euro Council meetings and we will see, when my mandate comes to an end, that is on 1 June 2012, whether or not we will transform the Euro Group presidency into a permanent presidency building on Protocol 14 of the Treaty, which does not actually say that a member of the Euro Group has to chair the Euro Group, but that another president of the Euro Group can be chosen from outside the members of the Euro Group. We shall see in due course.
What I want, in any case, is that we make the job of president of the Euro Group Working Group, in other words this subgroup of the Economic and Financial Committee, a full-time job. It is vital, if only to organise the day-to-day relations between the Commission, the Directorates-General and the Euro Group, that a president of the Euro Group Working Group be finally established permanently in Brussels. That will really help with the work involved in preparing and finding solutions.
In the very short term, I want to tell you that, in the Euro Group, we are currently finalising the amendments that need to be made to the framework agreement regarding the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Mr Klaus Regling, the big boss at the ESFS, is currently looking in detail at the various options, particularly those involving the leverages to be taken under scrutiny. I have every confidence that we can complete this work before the end of November. We have no choice, in any case, but to speed things up. I refer to the wise words spoken by the President of the Commission on this aspect of governance.
To tell you the truth, I can hardly tell the difference between style and substance, because in Europe I have often found that style is the substance that rises to the surface. If your working methods are intergovernmental, then your will is not entirely community-based, which obviously explains the working methods.
Before the end of the month, we will have to discuss things before taking a final decision on the matter of paying a sixth instalment of EUR 8 billion: we will pay two thirds to Greece and the International Monetary Fund will pay one third. During its session a week ago, the Euro Group decided that this instalment could be paid if sustainability is proved, if we agree on a new Greek programme on which Mr Van Rompuy had also got us to agree to on 26 and 27 October. Payment of this sixth instalment is subject to our conditions that all elements of all the decisions taken in Brussels on 26 and 27 October are met and we expect to have before us a letter from the Greek Prime Minister informing us of the exact intentions, now and over time, of the Greek authorities in meeting these recommendations and the decisions taken on 26 and 27 October.
We will up the pace to finalise the amendments to be made to the Treaty regarding the European Stability Mechanism. We will examine the tricky issue of private sector involvement, of the private sector participating in future operations of support. This is a deceptively simple issue, which, in fact, is more difficult on closer inspection.
Briefly speaking, Mr President, that is, in the main, my current thoughts on the matter.
I would very briefly like to go over a few points in our train of working methods: first of all macroeconomic surveillance and the European semester. I do not honestly believe that we are now in a position to draw definitive conclusions from this first experience of the first European semester. I am not disappointed with the results provided by the first European semester, however I do believe that they can absolutely be improved upon.
I think that it is quite normal during a first, hasty and rather superficial experience that not all possible lessons can be learnt. I believe that when governments present their draft budgets for 2012, this
and
consultation exercise will enable us to check whether or not governments have fully or partially followed the recommendations sent to them during the first European semester.
Generally speaking, I want this exercise to become more political, more inclusive and less technical. If we want to be the economic government of Europe, we should have the ambition of a government. It is obvious that all the different groups within the Council should be more involved in the exercise revolving around the European semester and that all the sensitivities expressed through the different Council groups must be listened to properly.
As economic government amounts to more than just managing budgets, I do not think it can be exclusively in the hands of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council and the finance ministers.
Wait! I can already hear the train whistle.
What I mean by this – as pointed out by both presidents – is that as the growth dimension is equally important, when preparing European councils, whether European councils at euro area level or European councils as we know them, the Council for Social Affairs, the Competitiveness Council, as well as the Research Council, the ministers for energy, transport and innovation, for employment, and for combating poverty will all obviously need to be involved, and I want them to be just as actively involved in the debate as the finance ministers."@en1
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