During the plenary session (17/05/2010 au 23/05/2010) of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs debate with the Council and the Commission on mechanisms of reinforced economic governance.

statement

Strasbourg

plenary session

economic governance (T)

REHN, Olli (ALDE, FI)

LOPEZ GARRIDO, Diego (ES)

Mechanisms of reinforced economic governance: extracts from the Council and Commission statements

SOUNBITE (Spanish) Diego L&Ograve;PEZ GARRIDO, on behalf of the European Council: In order to respond to the financial crisis situation we have launched a number of measures that are being discussed right now, we are talking about the supervision package, and I hope this will be approved as soon as possible. We've got another measure that was approved by ECOFIN yesterday, namely the regulation of the so-called hedge funds.

SOUNBITE (Spanish) Diego L&Ograve;PEZ GARRIDO, on behalf of the European Council: Measures proposed by the European Commission, that are being discussed now at the Council, are looking at budgetary discipline and at the maintenance of the stability and growth pact, as well as to mechanisms to prevent crisis from arising in the future.

SOUNBITE (Spanish) Diego L&Ograve;PEZ GARRIDO, on behalf of the European Council: The crisis has indeed put the finger on the shortcomings of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the EU, because we do not have a proper economic union, which all the treaties talk about, but it is not the real situation. We have monetary union but we haven't really moved on into an economic union...

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: Yesterday, on behalf of the euro-area member states, we delivered 14.5 billion euro for Greece, which the IMF has complemented by 5.5 billion euro. We said we would be ready to meet Greece's need, and we delivered in time.

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: Last week, Spain and Portugal presented significant new measures of fiscal consolidation, which clearly go into the right direction. These are important and difficult but necessary steps to reduce the public deficits in 2010 and 2011.

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: Let me underline that a faster reduction of the public deficit is an essential component of the financial stability package that was agreed on the 10th May. It is equally important that both countries adopt such structural reforms that will contribute to increase potential growth, especially reforms of the labour markets and pensions systems.

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: Countries with no or little fiscal space will need to frontload and accelerate measures, while others with better fiscal space should maintain their less restrictive fiscal policy stances, for the sake of growth and jobs in Europe.

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: The essential cornerstone of reinforcing economic governance is to coordinate fiscal policy in advance, in order to ensure that national budgets are consistent with the jointly agreed European policies and obligations, so that they don't put at risk the stability of the euro-area as a whole and/or that of the other member states

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: We propose to define indicators and a scoreboard, agree alert thresholds, and give recommendations and early warnings, if necessary. These indicators can include, e.g., the current account developments, productivity trends, unit labour costs, employment rate, etc.

SOUNBITE (English) Olli REHN, Commissioner: We need to be very clear to whoever is watching the euro-area: we will never be defeated. To discourage anyone from even trying our vigour, we need a permanent and robust framework for crisis management for the euro-area member states.