The European Parliament is not pleased with the lack of progress on economic reforms in the talks about increased economic cooperation in the European Union. After meeting with European Council President Herman van Rompuy, the leaders of the main groups in the parliament, commenting on the outcome of Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels and a subsequent briefing by Van Rompuy, all urged EU leaders to adopt measures that will lead to more effective economic governance.
Footage source: EbS
Edit: EUX.tv
SOUNDBITE (in English) Corien Wortmann-Kool (PPE, NL: I must say that, although I did feel and I expressed that the Council and the member states are very committed to work more closely together, we want to see more ambition, we want to see that they really coordinate their policies, that there is a kind of binding sanction mechanism when they don’t fulfil their obligations. And there, it is still a long way to go, and the Parliament really has to play a leading role as we did this week with the broad support of the EP on our position on the 2020 strategy and on the economic governance. And we really are going to challenge the Council to go hand in hand towards a strong and successful economic cooperation because that is in the interest of all our citizens that want at the end growth and jobs.
SOUNDBITE (in French) Véronique De Keyser (S&D, BE): In our group we are rather afraid about the fact that this idea of economic stabilisation in order to win over the confidence of financial markets will not only be an obstacle for real growth but will also bring job losses, more austerity, breaches on our social models… About the coordination method, we feel that the instruments that have been proposed are not that different from those being used for the Lisbon strategy; Lisbon objectives were good, but the method to obtain them has been a failure, are we driving towards a second failure then?
SOUNDBITE (in French) Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, BE): There is a huge breach in between Council’s and European Parliament’s positions. The Parliament wants real economic governance based on the community method and we do not believe that the Council, in trusting the member states to deal with this task, is ready for it. Lisbon strategy was a failure because member states were in charge of the job… We think that European Commission should be given more power on this field.
SOUNDBITE (in English) Rebecca Harms (Verts/ALE, DE):Maybe I had too high expectations; I expected clear steps from this summit towards a European economic governance and what I received are only very soft messages on more coordination and more cooperation, not very precise and Mr Van Rompuy even made it worse, from my perspective, because he very much showed that he is a man of the work in the old way, the intergovernmental, and this is not what Europe needs now.
SOUNDBITE (in English) Lothar Bisky (GUE/NGL, DE):Don’t spend money, don’t spend money… All the states do not want to spend money, but on the other hand, what will happen? what about the unemployment? Without money, if everybody keeps its euros there will be more people without jobs, then we will have more poorness and the education will not come the level we need in Europe. I am not satisfied about this, maybe it’s a starting point to go together into an economic governance, but it’s only a starting point, it’s nothing concrete.
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