Brussels, 15/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 15 February in Strasbourg, a very attentive European Parliament welcomed Professor Mario Monti. The president of the Italian Council of Ministers was greeted on a number of occasions by applause when he came to speak to MEPs about the economic crisis and what this is revealing in relations between different countries.
On the question of Greece, Monti said that it would appear that this country is being attacked but as an Italian he was happy that in the past his country had also been urged to respect certain disciplines. He added that it was important not to forget that in the past, Greece had been guilty of a catalogue of bad practices (corruption, nepotism, tax evasion etc.), which was damaging to the entire population.
He declared that, “the responsibility I feel to my country cannot be disconnected from what I feel, as an Italian, to the rest of the Union”. He also asked whether people remembered, “when I was a member of the Commission, governments playing the role of prosecutor of the European institutions, after having participated in the decision-making. I promised that I would never practice such a bad joke on the European public”. He explained that the big sacrifices, difficult reforms that Italy had to put into place, were not being imposed by Europe but were necessary to the life of the country. Monti pointed out that Italy was a rather increasingly rare example of a country whose population was in favour of Europe.
Italy is engaged in finding an exit strategy to the crisis, which involved budgetary consolidation, re-establishing budgetary balance by 2013 and far-reaching structural reforms. Mario Monti said that he was, “encouraged by what is happening” and he saw an evolution occurring, in Italy, “which would not passively submit to orientations but which would contribute to their definition, by playing its role as a major founding country and as one of the major economies in the euro zone”. He said that it would do this by building bridges with countries that were not yet members of the eurozone and those that did not want to join it. He sees a major risk in this period of European construction consisting of, “the confirmation of stereotypes” and the “labelling” of member states, which he rejects categorically. Monti considers it is imperative at this time to “recover the feeling of belonging to a unique project” without opposing “centre” and “ periphery”. Monti pointed out that in 2004, the main economies in the eurozone, Germany and France, were at the origin of the Stability and Growth Pact crisis (“with the complicity of Italy, which presided the ECOFIN”). In the EU, however, “there are no good or bad guys” and over the period of eight difficult years, the institutions have reconstructed the Stability Pact's credibility. It is the demand for discipline that yesterday encouraged him to, “make a difficult decision and not give the financial guarantee from the state to a magnificent project to bring the Olympics of 2020 to Rome”, he explained. Despite his disappointment, the public appears to have understood that they could not make future generations bear the weight of financial decisions that were difficult to quantify.
Discipline, however, is not enough and Mario Monti called on his European interlocutors to put more emphasis on growth in the crisis exit strategy. He said that there was enormous growth potential that could be found in the single market, which was not a simple list of rules but, “the body and sometimes the soul of European construction”. He is also asking why, amongst all the serious mechanisms that exist for ensuring budgetary discipline, a member state can remain unpunished for four or five years and breach single market rules before it is brought to the European Court of Justice. He also underlined other shortcomings: although monetary union was a useful construction, they were not in fact paying sufficient attention to economic union. He also said that the correct use of “stability bonds” (as sought by a large part of the EP) had not been understood as, “if they are well devised and respect the feelings of every country”, they can help promote growth and contribute to regulating the financial markets. He said that budgetary balance was desirable but that he would also like them to stop using the term “golden rule”. The president of the Italian Council pointed out that some people were questioning the compatibility of the notion of democracy and integration. In this connection he said that it was not possible, “for a profoundly insular culture, which naïvely thinks that integration necessarily means a super European state”. He concluded that they were not attempting to reinvent the wheel and that they would work with the institutions as imagined by Jean Monnet: the European Parliament is the best way of asserting the Union's democratic dimension.
The ideas Mario Monti expressed were generally sympathetically received by members of the EP, with the rare exceptions of the Northern League and the French Front, who see Mario Monti as an agent of international finance, and the GUE/ Nordic Left, which were against what they perceive as an austerity policy. The measures taken by the Italian government are exemplary examples for other countries, explained Joseph Daul (EPP). Johannes Swoboda (S&D) said that they should really make the shift to action, particularly with regard to implementing fair taxation. He said that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Italian government. “You could become our, 'roving Minister”” in countries experiencing difficulty, added Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE). “You have 'recivilised' Italy', pointed out Rebecca Harms (Greens/EFA). Even the Eurosceptics from the ECR group through Martin Callahan from the United Kingdom, although critical of the excess of harmonisation in the Union, said they respected the choices made by Mario Monti. (LG/trans/fl)