Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-01-Speech-3-017-000"
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"Mr President, over the last two years, European leaders have had to take difficult and sometimes painful measures to stabilise the euro area. Although this was necessary – and we are now starting to see that it was worth the effort – we recognise that financial stability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for economic recovery. We must do more. We must do more in particular on economic growth and employment and that is why we put in place the Europe 2020 strategy, the Euro-Plus Pact and the European semester. Growth and employment were never out of our minds. The March European Council will focus on structural growth and, by the way, the economies in most of our countries were growing positively in 2010 and 2011.
A return of confidence – and now I am speaking in the short term – in the euro area can restore the confidence of consumers and companies quickly, as was the case in 2009 after the financial crisis. The recent lowering of exchange rates for the euro can boost exports. All this is helpful, as I said, in the short term. The aim is to provide prospects, to offer hope through the decisions of this Council and those of March and June. Results take time but there is no doubt of our resolve and that of the Danish Presidency.
Now over to the treaty, as I know this is of particular interest to you, and it closes a chapter that has been the cause of much debate for almost two years. As I have said many times already in this hemicycle, we have badly missed a governance structure since the launching of the euro. This treaty must be seen as just one element of the reforms to economic governance that we have achieved over the last two years, reforms which involve both responsibility and solidarity, and which include the six-pack, which remains the backbone of our new governance architecture.
This treaty is about more responsibility and better surveillance. Every country that signs it commits itself to bringing a ‘debt brake’ into its legislation, preferably at constitutional level. An automatic correction mechanism will re-enforce compliance.
Enshrining the debt brake in the treaty will enhance its credibility. This is important as a confidence-building measure. It represents a major step forward towards closer and irrevocable fiscal and economic integration and stronger governance in the euro area. It will significantly bolster the outlook for fiscal sustainability and euro-area sovereign debt and therefore enhance economic growth. Placing this commitment to self-control in the treaty shows our long-term and irreversible commitment to avoiding excessive deficits and debt.
The treaty also changes the majority required to initiate the excessive deficit procedure – something that could not be done through the six-pack legislation. This is particularly important for the credibility of that procedure.
This is not a commitment to austerity, but a commitment to financing public expenditure through revenue rather than through debt. There is nothing virtuous about excessive debt – it means that more and more of your public expenditure is spent on servicing your debt instead of public services and public investment. Excessive public debt is a threat to our social model.
Like most members of the European Council, and like Parliament, I would have preferred these issues to be addressed by changing the existing treaties rather than through a separate treaty. As you know, the necessary unanimity for this was not forthcoming. There was no choice but to go down this route. But in so doing, I was personally determined to keep the new provisions as close as possible to the EU Treaties. We were not setting up a separate organisation but the means of reinforcing our Union. I had endeavoured in the same way when setting up the Euro-Plus Pact. I hope that our successors will succeed in integrating this treaty into the EU Treaties.
Let me also emphasise that I was personally committed to keeping the Union together as much as possible, while recognising the specificities of the euro area. All the countries ratifying this treaty will participate in Euro summits when the architecture and fundamental rules of the euro area are at stake or the implementation of the treaty and the competitiveness of the contracting parties. I was happy to see that almost all countries will sign the treaty. It will enter into force as soon as 12 euro countries have ratified it.
We were helped in this by the efforts of Parliament’s three representatives, Elmar Brok, Roberto Gualtieri and Guy Verhofstadt, whom I want to thank for their efforts. Parliament’s insistence, along with others, on coherence with the existing treaties was particularly helpful and contributed to securing a number of key features of the new treaty.
Besides this Fiscal Compact Treaty, we also endorsed the agreement among the 17 on the Treaty for the European Stability Mechanism. It will be signed this week so that it can take effect from July 2012. The early entry into force of this permanent firewall will help prevent contagion in the euro area and further restore confidence. Its operation will also be subject to the scrutiny of your Parliament, as I have indicated already in my letter of 22 March last year to your rapporteurs.
The focus of Monday’s informal European Council was indeed on growth and jobs. The bulk of our discussions were on this, though we approved at the same time the final text of the ESM Treaty and put the final touches to the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union.
As agreed in December, we will reassess the adequacy of resources under the EFSF and ESM rescue funds at the next European Council meeting – less than four weeks from now.
A final point. Although this was not formally on the agenda, we also briefly touched upon three urgent foreign policy issues, mainly along the lines of the good and strong conclusions adopted by the Foreign Affairs Council on 23 January. We endorsed the restrictive measures against Iran, including an oil embargo, as decided by the Foreign Ministers last week, and we expressed our outrage at the atrocities and repression committed by the Syrian regime, and urged the members of the UN Security Council to take long overdue steps to bring an end to the repression. These are good examples, after our joint actions in Libya, of a common foreign policy.
This concludes my report. Step by step we are making progress in the construction of an economic and monetary union, slower than hoped and expected, but reaching each time broad agreements among our Member States. This was the case also in the European Council of last Monday: a positive step on the road for more hope.
You will have seen from the statement approved by the members of the European Council that we have called this ‘growth-friendly’ fiscal consolidation and ‘job-friendly economic growth’.
What do we mean by this? Slashing deficits, but not by cutting our investments for the future: investments in education, training, research and development, and green infrastructure.
Increasing the competitiveness of our companies, while making it more attractive for them to hire people.
A strategy for growth covers many aspects: the short term and the longer term; economic policy and competitiveness, but also specific employment policies; national competencies and those of the Union.
We focused on three priorities. Firstly, creating jobs, especially for young people. Last week, I received a letter from the European Youth Forum in which they wrote: ‘Young people, in times of crisis and economic austerity, do not need nice words but strong investments’. And indeed, that is why we have agreed to use available European funds to set up apprenticeship schemes and help young business starters. Stimulating employment is mostly a responsibility for the individual countries, but most of the work we can do together, as a Union, and we will do it. Each Member State must have a ‘Job Plan’ as a part of its national reform programme.
Second priority: helping small and medium enterprises to get access to credit, for instance by freeing up available EU funds to support employers and reduce red tape. The recent initiatives of the ECB are also helpful in avoiding a credit crunch and a further deepening of the recession.
Third priority: the single market. We are determined to get more out of it, for instance by finalising the digital market and the energy market. Priority must go to the measures which do most to stimulate growth and jobs. We decided upon a series of deadlines for opening markets."@en1
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