Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-018-000"
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"en.20120215.4.3-018-000"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, very often after I have listened to the speeches by the Council and the Commission, I find that I do not know which world we are living in. However, apparently, we are able to function on different planets.
Mr Šefčovič from the Commission, you mentioned 2020 and it made us think that once upon a time, there was 2020. A lovely fairytale. Once upon a time, there was also the Lisbon strategy. These were goals which were formulated, but were ultimately never put into practice. I am really very pleased that the Council has finally realised that we have high rates of youth unemployment. This has been the case for about the last eight years and they have just discovered the fact. Welcome to the real world! Perhaps you will discover other things which are happening in the world over the course of the next eight years. When you talk about youth unemployment, you could make the link with Greece. How do you plan to resolve the problem of youth unemployment in Greece? Now we come to one of the Commission’s central problems. If the neoliberal Taliban are in power in the Commission, then the Member States will have a hard time. I can tell you what is going on in Greece at the moment, and Mr Swoboda is right. It is not only irresponsible of the Troika, but I would almost say that it is criminal.
I will give you an example. I do not know which officials had their fingers in the pie. The Council and the Commission are saying that the Greeks need to save EUR 326 million. The response of the Greek Government and Mr Samaras, after they had attempted rather belatedly to put the situation in order, was that they would make the savings from the defence budget, to which some of the Commission officials replied that they must make the cuts in pensions. How did they come up with this idea and why? It is right that the money should be found from the defence budget. This is what I call the neoliberal Taliban.
You are all calling on Greece to make savings. Mr Lambsdorff, it is not true that nothing is happening. First of all, without taking into account interest, Greek debt fell last year from 10% to between 3 and 4%. They have reduced their debt by 6% of GDP. We cannot say to these people that they have done nothing. The situation is slowly starting to become outrageous. Sometimes I think I am going mad. We want to give the Greeks EUR 130 billion. Now there is a problem with EUR 380 million and we are putting a stop to everything because of the EUR 380 million. Not to beat about the bush, this is coercion. It is coercion of the Greek people and it is not a solution.
Therefore, I would finally like to say that if everyone here believes that this is the way to save Greece, then they are wrong. You cannot introduce reforms without the support of the people. If you constantly provoke the people, then they will make the wrong decisions. It may be that the people of Greece currently have the wrong ideas about certain subjects, but you will not solve this problem by making them walk on their knees. They must be able to walk upright.
I would like to say one thing to the Germans in this House. When Germany occupied Greece, it transferred 486 million from the Greek central bank to Berlin. This money has never been repaid. Taking inflation into account, this amounts to EUR 81 billion that Germany owes Greece. Why do you not tell the Germans this? This would pay off one-sixth of Greece’s debts. This is how European history can be explained. It is known as the European narrative in European history."@en1
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