Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-15-Speech-3-118-000"
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"en.20120215.7.3-118-000"2
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"Mr President, if I am asked by the press when I leave this Assembly what was the focus of the debates, there will be one answer: youth unemployment. That has been the key word from every speaker in this debate on growth and unemployment that has lasted over an hour.
This is a key issue and we have to find ways to address it. It is important to grasp all the nuances here because there is no necessary contradiction between consolidation and growth. It is all a question of priorities: very hard, very difficult priorities in our budgets. We can no longer just discuss this and ask: ‘who is going to spend the next million or the next billion’? We have to discuss how we are spending in general and make sure that we get our priories right; that is important in any parliament; that is important in the European Parliament.
Do we have our priorities right? I think that is a key question and answering it entails a great deal of conflict, because if we want to change our priorities, we will have to have debates that actually change things and concern the people who are the beneficiaries of the present budget and the present way of spending.
Another issue is the fact that greening our economy is part of the answer. I know that some people think that we will have to wait, but greening our economy is part of the answer: being more efficient in the way that we use our resources and, in so doing, creating more space for the most important resource we have: human beings.
It is very important to take note of the Commission’s five priorities because they are important steps in actually reaching the goals of Europe 2020. We must make sure that we pursue differentiated, growth-friendly fiscal consolidation. Second: we must restore normal lending to the economy because SMEs cannot create jobs if they cannot borrow, if their credit line is cut. So normal lending is very important. Third: we must promote growth and competitiveness for tomorrow. A lot of the proposals already tabled are heading in exactly that direction. Fourth, as we have been discussing today, we must tackle unemployment and the social consequences of the crisis. And fifth – perhaps an undervalued point – public administration must be modernised to make sure that we actually help enterprise to create jobs.
These are the important issues and I think that labour market reforms should also be understood as a way of facilitating young people’s entry to work, making sure that they are actually taken on by enterprises and giving them a chance to show that they can actually participate, and that their work is also beneficial to their enterprise.
Last but not least, this is an important debate because it forms part of a long series of debates that Parliament has held in the past and which we will continue to have in the future. Solving the crisis is a very long and very demanding task for everybody. It takes cooperation and when we discuss solutions – be it some of the things that I have mentioned, some of the things mentioned by the Commissioner, or a number of the things mentioned in the three reports that we have been discussing today – a major challenge is to make sure that we cooperate.
I am very much looking forward to continuing cooperation with Parliament on the proposals already tabled, and making sure that we can make it obvious that there is no necessary contradiction between wise consolidation and growth within the European Union."@en1
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