Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-30-Speech-3-152-000"
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"en.20111130.16.3-152-000"2
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"Mr President, with the European semester we are attempting to perform an unbelievable balancing act that not even the most talented acrobat could maintain for long. You simply cannot say, on the one hand, ‘everyone must exercise discipline’ but then not have the instruments in place that are needed to bring about this discipline.
With regard to Germany, which is clearly causing the whole of Europe to suffer at the moment, I would like to repeat Heiner Flassbeck’s very good analysis of the situation: the success of the Social Democrats with regard to the Europe 2020 agenda, which resulted in there no longer being any increase in wages in real terms in Germany, was precisely what made the German economy even stronger than it was before in relation to the surrounding economies. In terms of the global economy, that had practically no effect, as the only country that has been able to genuinely increase its market share in the last 10 years is China. If the Germans had not succeeded in putting themselves in this position, we would now have a very different problem in Europe in that we would all have been dragged down. Of course, I could now say that I would like the German people to earn more and no longer to be so productive in terms of work units like the other countries. Is that the solution, however? The answer is ‘no’. We are in fact facing an acute problem. Right now I have confidence that the Heads of State or Government will be able to quickly put in place the finance policy measures that we need.
However, the European semester can only be one step along the way to getting to where we need to be, towards the genuine interweaving of our common interests. Then there will have to be no more no-go areas when it comes to tax policy. Then we will be able to talk about employment policy, but only within the framework of a genuinely new treaty drawn up by a convention. In the short term, the European semester will bring us little more than confusion among the citizens, because they will not understand the connections. Nevertheless, it is at least a forum for discussion."@en1
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