Brussels, 18/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - The Spanish government, concerned about maintaining growth in Europe, has suggests that unused EU funds should be diverted to support jobs, said Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Garcia-Margallo in Strasbourg on Wednesday 18 January.
“Of course, we need market stability … but we need growth, too”, he argued. “We spoke about this yesterday with the president of the Commission: there is money which hasn't been used and which could be devoted to job creation, in particular to addressing youth unemployment, a particularly serious problem in Spain”, he said. The Spanish government has revised its growth forecasts for 2012 downwards, from 1% to 0.7% of GDP.
Elsewhere, on Wednesday, the Belgian and Dutch prime ministers argued on Wednesday that budgetary discipline in the EU will only bring recovery if it is accompanied by measures to promote growth and encourage job creation. “Speaking solely about budgetary discipline is not enough”, said Dutch Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague, during a visit of his Belgian counterpart, Socialist Elio De Rupo. “We are calling for European summits also to be devoted to economic growth and job creation”, said Di Rupo, indicating that, in his opinion, austerity was not a sufficiently positive policy to lead towards citizens. The Dutch prime minister held that the EU has still much to gain in the telecommunications and information technology sectors. The informal European summit, scheduled for 30 January in Brussels, is likely to address issues such as employment and growth. (LC/transl.rt)