Brussels, 17/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 16 May, French President François Hollande announced that France intended to float a European initiative, mainly with a view to establishing a eurozone economic government that would meet every month.
“If Europe does not move forward, it will fall or even be wiped off the world map and from people's imagination altogether (…). My duty is to bring Europe out of its lethargy and to reduce people's disenchantment with it, as they cannot understand what lies ahead of the European Union”, the French president said.
Hollande hopes to launch a European initiative based on four key points to:
1) Set up an economic government in the eurozone that would meet every month and that would have its own full-time president devoted to that specific task and appointed for a long tenure. That economic government would, Hollande said, “discuss the main decisions of economic policy to be taken by member states, harmonise taxation, begin convergence on the social front from the top downwards, and set in motion a plan for combating tax fraud”.
2) Establish a plan for ensuring young people's integration. The EU has already earmarked €6 billion for youth employment. Even before the EU multiannual financial programme is in place for 2014, Hollande proposes “immediate deployment” of “part of those funds so that we can support all young Europeans who, today, are struggling to find training or employment”. Still in this same vein, for preparing the future, Europe hopes to define an investment strategy, mainly for new industries and for new communication systems.
3) Set in place a “European Energy Community” intended to coordinate and bring together all the efforts being made for renewable energies so that energy transition is ensured at a time when member states of Europe do not all have the same energy policies.
4) Establish a new stage of integration with “a budgetary capacity that would be attributed to the eurozone and, gradually, the possibility of raising loan capital”.
Hollande pointed out that Germany has on several occasions shown that it is ready for a political Union, for a new stage of integration. “France is also willing to give content to political Union, to be accomplished within two years”, he said. However, Hollande has not yet explained what shape that political Union would take.
Unpopular and made more fragile by France's slip back into economic recession, President Hollande has undertaken to make “year II” of his mandate a year for taking up the fray and dealing with matters. Hollande reiterated his commitment to reverse the unemployment trend by end 2013 - an objective that economists consider untenable.
Furthermore, Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her assurance in Berlin on Thursday that her relations with Hollande are good, at the very moment when the latter was stating in Paris that he has always been able to reach a compromise with Merkel, although relations between the two countries are strained. “The French-German relationship is based on a very sound basis, and my personal relationship with François Hollande is good but that does not rule out the fact that we sometimes differ over substance”, the chancellor said during a discussion on Europe in the German capital. France is an essential part of the European Union and still more for the eurozone, she went on to add, saying that it is the wish of all German political policy-makers that France should rapidly take the decisions necessary to ensure success, i.e. the structural reforms required to allow it to recover its competitiveness. Merkel added that she feels optimistic about this developing well.
Hollande expressed the view that, without France and Germany, Europe would be unable to progress. “The first thing that must be done every time, and that is how we have been advancing over the past year, is for a compromise to be found between France and Germany. With Mrs Merkel, we have sought that compromise at every stage. It has taken time but we have always got there in the end”, the French president said.
Both Germany and France are “hit by recession and so we shall always find an agreement with Mrs Merkel, without waiting for the German elections on 22 September”, Hollande underlined.
Alain Cadec, MEP (EPP, France), felt that “the head of State's speech on Europe was hardly reassuring - far from it”. “Although the president has tried to change the style of things by declaring that he wants to 'go on the offensive', all this is still, as ever, just talk and declarations of intent”, Cadec commented (our translation throughout). (LC/transl.jl)