Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-009-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120215.4.3-009-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Europe is in an unprecedented economic situation. After the years of crisis, our forecasts show that growth is at a virtual standstill and will remain slow for the foreseeable future. Unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is unacceptably high and may remain so for many years.
But these actions must be part of the wider reform of labour market policies aimed at getting more Europeans on to the labour market and increasing their employment opportunities. I am sure that these issues will be discussed again at greater length in a moment when you debate the Cornelissen, Gauzès and Berès reports.
I started my presentation in a slightly downbeat fashion, but I would like to conclude on a more optimistic note. While no one is brave enough yet to suggest that we have turned the corner, that the worst might be over, and that we might finally be back on the road to growth, I think it is fair to say that we now at least have far greater control over our future. The new measures that have been proposed by the Commission and agreed by this House – now I am talking about the ‘six-pack’ and other measures – are giving much more visibility to the European Semester and are allowing us to take action far earlier than before and to avoid the kind of fire-fighting that has dominated our discussions until now.
Yesterday, the Commission adopted its first alert mechanism report according to which the 12 countries should be subject to a more in-depth review. Our recommendations will now be discussed in the Council and Eurogroup and, of course, the feedback from this House into this discussion would be very welcome. This might not seem particularly optimistic, especially for the 12 Member States concerned, but it underlines the rapid and effective improvements that have already been made to the way in which public finances are managed in Europe.
We need to have the right tools in place to monitor progress, address risk and propose remedies well before a crisis hits. We must make sure that the crisis that we are now going through will never again be repeated. Thanks to widespread agreement between the Commission, Parliament and the Council, we now have the tools and, although it is early days, I would say that we have very strong indications that they are working. I fully expect the positive spirit of the informal Council to continue through to the Spring Council, that the Heads of State and Government will endorse the guidelines for growth and, more importantly, that they will meet their commitments on the ground.
This is the background against which we need action and against which the actions of European institutions and national governments alike will be judged. We need to deliver on the greatest concerns of our citizens – jobs and growth – and we need to mark a turning point in the way we have addressed this crisis until now.
As we already said in our road map last October, we need decisive action to address Greece’s problems and restore public finances to health. We need to strengthen the European banking system and to build credible firewalls for the euro area, and we need stability and discipline to prevent a repeat of recent events, but unless we can also get our economy growing and creating jobs, we will only have a partial solution and we will not win the support of our citizens.
That is why the informal European Council was such an important stepping stone for the Spring European Council. It represented agreement among Europe’s leaders to concentrate on a few immediate priorities with substantial potential for growth and employment – first and foremost for our young people and for our SMEs, to help them to grow and to create jobs again. This message was already at the core of our 2012 Annual Growth Survey (AGS), adopted by the Commission last November, and with this AGS, we are launching the new European Semester. As you know, our survey is a contribution to the Spring European Council and we will call upon the European Council to give very strong backing to the priorities we have identified. I hope that we can also count on the support of this House to do so.
The Annual Growth Survey points to the number of priorities we have to achieve in the future and the priorities which should guide the Member States in drawing up their own new national programmes, which are due to be presented in April. On the basis of this, the Commission will put forward country-specific proposals for the discussion in May and adoption at the June European Council.
What is very important is that very little of what is in the Annual Growth Survey is completely new. There is, and has been for some time, a broad consensus on the need to cover jobs and growth as well as getting public finances in order. We need a balanced approach, covering growth and jobs and the improvement of fiscal consolidations and public finances, but what we need even more is implementation and respect for the commitments which we have already undertaken.
As far as new ideas are concerned, we have to remind ourselves that we already have a policy for jobs and growth. It is called Europe 2020. We also have a European Semester which represents a quantum leap in economic policy coordination in Europe. For the first time this year, the semester will take place within our strengthened system of economic governance based on the ‘six-pack’ legislation that the European Parliament played such an important role in developing. What is needed now is a firm commitment at national and European levels to picking up the pace of the reforms and to carrying that commitment through to 2012.
The Commission has already put forward a proposal regarding the problem which is probably the most burdensome and most difficult for our citizens – namely, youth unemployment. We cannot accept the fact that we have 7.5 million young people across Europe classified as NEETs, which means that they are not in employment, education or training. They definitely do not deserve this.
We need to tackle these high levels of youth unemployment and we need to do so in a sustainable manner. Getting young people on to the labour market is an essential element of our efforts to ensure future growth. We have already set up action teams that will visit the eight Member States with the highest youth unemployment rates and they will examine, together with national authorities and social partners, what we can do better, how we can make better use of EU and national funds, and how we can focus our efforts on social policies, SMEs and job creation for young people. I am very happy to report that our initial contacts with the Member States have been very encouraging and I hope that we will already be able to bring a positive report to the Spring European Council on this matter."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples