Brussels, 13/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European far Left has launched an appeal to protest against European governments that support the macro-economic conditionality applied to all structural funds. The GUE/NGL Group at the European Parliament is calling on European citizens to send these governments a warning and has drafted a letter to be sent directly to them. This “Support the Regions, Don't Punish Them” campaign was launched on the initiative of MEPs Cornelia Ernst (Germany) and Younous Omarjee (France). It comes just at the right moment because the modalities for these conditions are currently being debated by the Council, in the context of the negotiations on the multiannual financial framework (see EUROPE 10620).
The European Commission's proposal to reform 2014-2020 cohesion policy introduces the possibility of extending the suspension of payments of all structural funds in a country if it breaches the revised stability and growth pact. At the moment, only cohesion funds are affected by this stipulation. Hungary nearly suffered this fate (see EUROPE 10623 and 10568) and Omarjee has described the proposal as “the worst measure produced by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy”.
The GUE/NGL Group therefore wants to put pressure on national governments that support the proposal. To this end, they have provided protest letter templates on their website, for people to send to Austria, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden. The initiative is based on the principle that Europe needs investment programmes and not cuts in payments. The letter calls on the governments concerned to revise their positions during the Council debates so that the sanctions system planned is not implemented. It also adds that member states should not be pitted against each other and that what we need is solidarity and not sanctions and cuts in Union funding. The European Parliament, Committee of the Regions and the European Trade Union Confederation have already unsuccessfully attempted to oppose this measure, which they consider a double sanction, because the regions are having to pay for the mistakes committed by national governments. (MD/transl.fl)