Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-14-Speech-2-454-000"

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"en.20120214.21.2-454-000"2
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"MadamĀ President, ladies and gentlemen, we need to be a little bit more honest again in this debate. What was the situation like before the euro was introduced? What were the interest rates like in Greece when it still had the drachma? What were the rates in Italy when it had the lira, or in Spain with the peseta and Portugal with the escudo? They were considerably higher than what has to be paid on the financial markets at the moment. Those Member States within the euro enjoyed the sweet poison of low interest rates for a decade, and pursued a spending policy that they are no longer on top of. For them to now say that they want to continue to enjoy that sweet poison via the introduction of Eurobonds is precisely the wrong reaction to have. Many mistakes were made here in the past that now need to be corrected. Anyone who believes that this problem would be solved by making the drug that is low interest rates available on a sustained basis would be taking away the pressure that, thank goodness, is currently being applied to a number of Member States by the financial markets. As a second issue, I would point out that Europe would not be made healthy where the result of Eurobonds would be not to make the sick healthy, but to make the healthy sick. That is why we need to be honest on this issue, too. Eurobonds would not strengthen the European Union, they would weaken it. Then we have the craziest proposal of all in this resolution, namely to engineer a kind of self-funding reduction of debts through new debts via a redemption fund. What world are we living in? In real terms, what that means is that the debts that countries have run up would be refinanced thanks to the creditworthiness of others, with the costs being borne by those who kept their finances in order in that they have to pay higher interest rates for those who failed to do likewise. That is the communitarisation of debts. Anyone introducing this as a policy instrument endangers Europe much, much more than what we have currently put in place in connection with the rescue packages. I can therefore but warn against acting as if Eurobonds would enable us to solve all our problems."@en1
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