Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-30-Speech-3-135-000"
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"en.20111130.16.3-135-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, I have already had occasion, several months ago, to present an initial analysis of the progress of the first European semester, but in fact at the moment we still do not know the results or how effective this process has been. We will receive the final assessment, as far as the current regime fulfils the hopes placed in it, only at the moment when the national parliaments finally adopt their draft budgets for next year, because the whole idea of the European semester is based on getting national decision-making bodies more involved in the process of implementing priorities related to the growth and development of the European Union. This is why the whole system – initiated by the European Commission in the Annual Growth Survey, which indicates priorities that then translate into particular recommendations to Member States – will be effective only if that information and those priorities are correctly communicated to the national parliaments and if the national parliaments take all these aspects into account in the course of adopting their national budgets.
We have a certain amount of experience after almost a year of the operation of this process. At today’s Ecofin Council, the next Annual Growth Survey was presented, and here we already have the first lesson which we have learned together with the Commission. The first lesson is that up till now the process of discussion and decision-making which is being designed has had too short a time frame. Hence, in contradistinction to the first Annual Growth Survey, this draft Annual Growth Survey was presented over a month in advance in comparison to the previous one, which gives the Council, other institutions and the Member States more time to analyse and prepare their national responses, so to speak, to the challenges highlighted by the European Commission. In fact the time constraints were one of the first elements which became evident as this process was put into effect.
Today’s Ecofin Council also included the presentation by Mr Rehn of two further draft regulations that will improve the system which is currently being operated. They increase the oversight, of the European Commission principally, over the procedure – I would not want to call it a budgetary procedure – over the measures used to communicate EU priorities and directions of development to the national parliaments. These two regulations are currently restricted just to the euro area, as this is the group of Member States which have the greatest responsibility at the moment in these matters, and with them lies the greatest challenge to improve the economic situation in the European Union and the situation of its public finances.
Apart from this, and this is very interesting – and I think it is a very good initiative on the part of the European Commission – both regulations contain clear instructions concerning inclusion of the European Parliament in the process of discussing these priorities and the means of their implementation by the Member States. In the current system there is no clear statement as to how this discussion should proceed. In both draft regulations it is clearly stated that the appropriate European Parliament committees can invite representatives of the Member States and the European Commission for discussion, while in the forum of the European Parliament it will be possible to discuss both the recommendations for particular Member States and the method in which these Member States are to implement them.
To recapitulate: at the moment we are discussing something which is being done for only the first time. In many instances, the remarks made by Ms Berès are very well founded and justified. We are all learning this process and we are evaluating its effectiveness on the basis of results which we are receiving in fact daily; every day new information becomes available about how particular Member States are interpreting the procedure and how particular Member States are implementing the European semester. We are also seeing the results of the first discussion at EU level. Lessons are being learned very quickly, and an attempt to improve and strengthen the process is in progress.
At today’s Ecofin Council, the Presidency undertook responsibility to pass further initiatives of the European Commission to the appropriate working groups as soon as possible, so that the process of implementation and improvement of the European semester will go forward as smoothly and as quickly as possible, in order to achieve the intended effect and improve the effectiveness and transparency of the system. Thank you very much for your attention."@en1
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