Brussels, 10/05/2010 (Agence Europe) - Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Monday 10 May, French EPP MEP Alain Lamassoure said that 9th May 2010 would go down as the day that a new Schumann Plan was launched. He said this was excellent news for Europe and a whole new arena of work was opening. At the press conference, Lamassoure set out his ideas on how EU policies should be funded in the wake of the Greek debt crisis and ahead of the introduction of the EU's new 2020 strategy.
The 9 May 1950 Schuman Plan gave rise to a new long-term initiative of pooling coal and steel in Europe, and the new Schuman Plan amounts to a pooling of finance, which will in turn lead to new economic and budget developments, argued Alain Lamassoure, setting out his own personal proposals (not speaking as a representative of his political party, the EPP, or as a representative of the EP's budgets committee that he chairs). Alain Lamassoure said that the happenings of the weekend had demonstrated that the EU treaties now contain the whole gamut of measures needed to respond to the EU leaders' political desires. He said that for ten years now, every time there had been important decisions to be taken, people had come up against the problem of shortcomings and gaps in the EU Treaty but had passed this off as shortcomings in the EU institutions. Things can no longer go on like this, he explained, because that time has passed. He said he had watched with a smile as, all of a sudden, Europe's leaders had discovered the existence of Article 122 (formerly Article 100) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which states that in exceptional circumstances of force majeure, EU financial solidarity can come into play. Lamassoure said that the top priority now must be to make a success of the new plan to prevent financial meltdown in the future.
Lamassoure recommends a debate about the impact and lessons to be learnt for economic policies within the EU and to prepare for moving from the current “solidarity among EU countries” plan to the next stage, “European solidarity at EU-level”. He said the new financial pooling for the future had to be constructed, along with the future economic pooling and budget pooling. He made the following suggestions: (1) The financial crisis is simply an indicator of the economic crisis that the EU has been in for a decade or more, arising from the failure of the economic models of around twenty countries in the EU. (2) It can be seen that there are three categories of EU countries that have to overhaul their economic systems. “Spendthrift” countries like Greece that were the public face of the crisis and have been living well beyond their means, even going so far as to camouflage their accounts and abuse the generous aid they had received from the EU Structural Funds and other EU aid. “Slowcoach” countries, the three biggest of which are unfortunately the three biggest economies on continental Europe, namely France, Germany and Italy. These countries have been experiencing close to zero growth since the year 2000 and have growth potential of no higher than 1.5% of GDP per year from now until 2020. This situation cannot be allowed to continue from the economic, financial, budget or political points of view, argued Alain Lamassoure. The third group of countries are those that seemed to be the EU's star pupils as little as two years ago - countries like Ireland, the United Kingdom and Spain, which now realise that their high rates of growth were built on sand. (3) In order to emerge from this crisis stronger than before, more Europe and more European solidarity will be required, rather than turning in on oneself. (4) This assumes that the EU takes up the common target in the EU 2020 strategy of doubling EU member states' growth potential, argued Lamassoure. When they adopt the new strategy, Europe's leaders must make it credible by matching the priorities with the cash required to implement them and achieve the broad target of doubling growth potential. (5) Measures that have gradually been introduced piecemeal over the past few months must be built upon to organise true economic governance of the EU (coordinating economic policies) through the involvement of national parliaments in order to move from simply a financial pool to an economic pool (Lamassoure said that countries must sit around the table together and discuss their growth models, along with the actual content of their economic policies, rather than simply discussing budget statistics.) and a budgetary pool (the EU budget cannot be doubled or tripled in the next ten years but if the EU is to be credible, resources must be provided to finance the EU 2020 strategy, warned Lamassoure.). (6) Mechanisms must be introduced to coordinate economic and budget policies and start considering how to move from the current solidarity among EU countries to a genuine EU-wide solidarity that will have to contain some EU funding. (7) It is no longer possible to operate with an EU budget funded solely by national governments. New ways must be found of feeding the EU coffers, argued Lamassoure. (L.C./transl.fl)