Brussels, 25/10/2011 (Agence Europe) - During question time of the Polish Presidency and the European Commission at the European Parliament on Tuesday 25 October, MEPs were strongly critical of the Council of Ministers' attempts to water down the EP's role in the European semester budget procedures. On behalf of the EPP, French MEP Jean-Paul Gauzès slammed the Polish Presidency's attitude that MEPs should read newspapers and the internet if they wanted to find out what was going on with the European semester. He suggested that the semester was hot air and spin. French Liberal MEP Sylvie Goulard was equally unhappy, saying that it was insulting the EP to make it have to beg for news. She called for a genuine debate with the EP about reform of economic governance and Europe.
Italian MEP Roberto Gualtieri (S&D) said the European semester will remain a piece of red tape if it is not given democratic legitimacy. Further to the Left, Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout and Greek GUE/NGL MEP Nikolaos Chountis said the European semester was pursuing the dominant austerity agenda. Eickhout criticised the European Commission for only using econoimc indicators in its country-specific recommendations, rather than using its own EUROPE 2020 strategy growth indicators for education, research and the environment. The only praise for the Polish Presidency's line came from Czech Conservative Ivo Strejèek, who liked the way the Presidency had shown that national parliaments had a greater role to play here than the European Parliament.
The Polish under-secretary-of-state for finance, Jacek Dominik, said that the European semester gave national parliaments a way of scrutinising how EU policies are put into practice in their country, and EU Health Commissioner John Dalli said it was useful and positive to be able to exmaine detailed country-specific recommendations before they were introduced. The European semester is a system for the EU to examine a country's budget and planned economic reforms in the first half of the year befor the budget is actually passed in the second half of the year.
In a conclusions document published on Sunday, the European Council said that the next European semester should be as ambitious as possible and learn lessons from the past. In December 2011, the Commission will publish its Annual Growth Review, which signals the start of the European semester and will be used by the European Council to prepare for its spring summit 2012. (MB/transl.fl)