The General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Luca Visentini, deplored the fact that some EU Member States are refusing to use European instruments such as the SURE instrument or the Recovery and Resilience Facility for fear of increasing their public debts, at the Tripartite Social Summit on Wednesday 24 March.
For the trade unionist, one way out is to significantly increase the EU’s own resources through a reform of European fiscal policy, on the one hand, and the introduction of new fiscal tools, such as a tax on financial transactions or environmental taxes, on the other. “This is the only way to make the EU debt sustainable in the long run”, according to Mr Visentini.
Mr Visentini also expressed concern about the slow implementation of European aid. “The recovery funds will start being disbursed at the end of the year, and they will take one to two years to have an impact. Therefore, it is urgent to prolong the emergency measures for employment and the economy, otherwise we will face a disaster”, he said, citing the SURE instrument to support national short-time working schemes.
Alban Maggiar, President of SMEunited, also underlined the need for liquidity for SMEs and the need to maintain short-time working schemes and fixed compensatory aid as long as necessary.
For his part, Pierre Gattaz, President of BusinessEurope, suggested the creation of a scoreboard to evaluate the use of European funds by Member States in order to have a more comprehensive picture of the impact of this European aid on growth and employment in the long term.
To read Mr Visentini’s speech: https://bit.ly/3lURAcY
To read Mr Gattaz’s: https://bit.ly/31h9Gw1 (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)