Brussels, 17/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, MEPs will pass a resolution criticising the draft budget pact (treaty on eurozone stability, coordination and governance) currently being negotiated by 26 member states. On Tuesday 17 January, Elmar Brok (EPP, Germany), who is a member of the EP observer delegation at the treaty talks, said that a joint position had been reached at the European Parliament to ensure that people understand that all the measures in the pact that have to be implemented must respect Community rules and procedures and this must be written in stone, including the EP's co-decision rights. He said that the Stability and Growth Pact had to be respected, along with cooperation with national parliaments and the agreement must not lead to the creation of new institutions, hence the importance of the treaty being added to the body of full EU law over the next five years at the latest.
The EP's constitutional affairs committee and economic and monetary affairs committee met the day before to discuss the treaty talks. A new draft treaty will be unveiled on Thursday 19 January. Justifying the EP's critical, but pragmatic approach to ensure there was no negative impact on the European project, Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy), another member of the EP delegation, said that five areas remained to be negotiated by ministers, possibly at the ECOFIN Council meeting of Tuesday 24 January or by heads of state at the European summit itself on 30 January - namely whether ratifying the treaty should be a precondition for being able to receive funding from the European Stability Mechanism; penalties for countries breaking the rules and the role to be played here by the European Commission; reform of the Euro Plus Pact; whether the president of the EP, the president of the European Commission and representatives of non-euro member states should be allowed to attend eurozone summits; and the number of countries that have to ratify the treaty for it to come into force (9, 15 or 17).
Rafal Trzaskowski (EPP, Poland) said the EP was involved in a damage limitation exercise in terms of the treaty's impact on the Community method. Sylvie Goulard (ALDE, France) urged MEPs to put the talks in context - the summit on 30 January has been called to make a further move towards economic and monetary union, but by downgrading the credit rating of nine eurozone nations, rating agency Standard and Poor's was challenging the way heads of state were managing the debt crisis. This was also raised by Jürgen Klüte (GUE/NGL, Germany). Andrew Duff (ALDE, UK) didn't want the EP to be over-complicit in the outcome of the talks, arguing that the EP president's attendance could undermine the EP's transparency and ability to criticise the Council of Ministers. Gerald Häfner (Greens/EFA, Germany) said the new treaty did not cover growth to a sufficient extent. Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium) criticised the lack of any reference to “common tools” needed by Europe to deal with the crisis (by which he meant eurobonds), the Tobin Tax and project bonds for big infrastructure projects. Gualtieri referred to the Commission's idea of introducing a reference in the treaty's preamble to a roadmap leading to eurobonds. (MB/transl.fl)