Brussels, 29/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - It doesn't look as though Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn managed at a joint hearing of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and Employment and Social Affairs Committee on Wednesday 28 November 2012 to convince MEPs of the credibility of the measures recommended in the European Commission's Annual Growth Review. Rehn had come to present the economic policies the Commission is planning to get the member states to introduce in 2013 at the start of the new European Semester and as a preliminary stage of the country-specific recommendations for each country that the Commission will be drawing up in June 2013.
Rehn said the three priorities for 2013 were: investing in the real economy by facilitating access to finance for companies, particularly small business; budget consolidation to ensure sound public finance as a precondition for sustainable growth; and pursuit of structural reforms. On the latter point, Rehn welcomed the raft of reforms under way in Europe. Elisa Ferreira (S&D, Portugal) queried the results of the reforms, but told Rehn it had yet to be seen whether they were well-founded. The MEPs are alarmed that despite the fact that the austerity policies have shown their limits, they are the only thing recommended for the future.
Jean-Paul Gauzès (EPP, France) argued, however, that the financial stabilisation measures and structural reforms were needed today because of the economic situation of some member states and the measures are the solution, not the cause of their problems.
Ferreira told Rehn that the Commission's recommendations were based on economic forecasts whose quality was questionable, but Rehn said the forecasts had been corroborated by analysts.
The Commissioner recognised that growth is lower than forecast, but said that was down to certain policy failings at the start of the year and the slowdown in the global economy. The policy failures now needed to be corrected and the EU's economic performance improved across the board. He said that in the next few weeks, the Commission would be unveiling a proposal to ensure better balance in the European economy, adding that action should focus on countries in surplus as well as countries in deficit. Some MEPs say the former contribute as much as the latter to the economic imbalances.
Roadmap for boosting EMU questioned. On the same day, Rehn presented the Commission's roadmap for boosting economic and monetary union (EMU) to reporters (see EUROPE 10740), which had been given a mixed welcome by MEPs. The roadmap sets out a short-, medium- and long-term agenda for completing EMU, but Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt (ADLE) tweeted that action was needed “now.” “The 'Blueprint towards a deep and genuine economic and monetary union (EMU)' proposed by the Commission is not ambitious enough. It is too bureaucratic and lacks a clear vision to tackle the real problems of the euro zone”, said S&D group leader Hannes Swoboda, while Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy) welcomed the fact that the Commission had distanced itself from the Intergovernmental Method and moved towards the Community Method, in which the Parliament can play a full role. (EL/transl.fl)