Brussels, 28/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - EU leaders belonging to the Party of European Socialists (PES) called, on Thursday 28 October, for a more balanced system of economic governance. They want the European Council to deliver a “more balanced economic message than simply austerity, cuts and sanctions”.
“We need greater budgetary discipline but also measures and instruments to promote jobs and growth”, the PES argues in a press release. The suspension of voting rights for member states breaching the rules of the stability and growth pact (a measure which, as France and Germany would like, requires amendment of the treaty) is not acceptable, they say. The Socialist prime ministers consider that important elements are missing from the economic governance plans. These are: - a monitoring system for employment and social levels (as key indicators of economic strength); - a commitment to push for an EU financial transaction tax, bank levies and to seriously explore the idea of Eurobonds; - greater coordination on EU economic proposals with EU and employment ministers; - and a clear commitment to a permanent crisis and debt-management mechanism. Furthermore, the PES is opposed to the proposal aimed at withholding EU structural funds from member states that infringe budget guidelines.
“Europe is now beginning to change character due to the conservative majority of the European Council under the leadership of German Chancellor Angela Merkel”, Paul Nyrup Rasmussen, the president of the Party of European Socialists, told the press. It is a matter of creating a “true European mechanism where you really ensure that a country which is in trouble on its debt is assisted in the right way, with conditionality, yes, but not losing its voting rights”, he said, at the same time underlining that account must be taken of growth and employment. The PES put its proposal to the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, in a letter sent on Wednesday 27 October. He pointed out that the Socialist family is “not convinced that we need to have any treaty changes” in order to create a permanent crisis mechanism. “We are already doing this, we have already done it for a couple of countries outside the eurozone (Article 1.22) and there is nothing in the treaty which is preventing us from doing that for eurozone countries also”, he said. They were interpreting the intervention by Angela Merkel as a “political right wing strategy and we will not passively accept that”, he said. (L.C./A.By./transl.jl)