Strasbourg, 05/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The polemics over the warning to Germany in the framework of the respect of the Stability Pact ("blue letter", as the Germans say, alluding to the letters that teachers send schoolchildren who need to be put back on the right path) continued in Strasbourg. At a press conference on other subjects, President Prodi stipulated that the Commission's decision in no way rested on a political judgement (contrary to what Chancellor Schroeder seems to believe: see yesterday's EUROPE, p. 8), but on the obligations enshrined in the Stability Pact: "I was sorry to do it but I was obliged to do it", said Prodi, speaking in English. The declarations by Commissioner Verheugen to the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sontag on the subject are not an example of "misbehaviour" on the part of a European Commissioner, who considered that he had to make these declarations following leaks of what he had said in the Commission. He explained to me "calmly and convincingly", in the same way he had expressed his objections in Commission, "before voting in favour of the decision, like the other Commissioners".
Parliamentarians are not unanimous. The German President of the EPP-ED Group, Hans-Gert Poettering, confirmed his backing for the Commission, manifesting his "astonishment" at Gerhard Schroeder's statements and of those who seem to believe in a "plot" against Germany. According to him, if the EcoFin Council does not follow the Commission, on 12 February, it would be "a disaster" for the stability of the euro zone. The Spanish President of the Socialist Group, Enrique Baron, is of the same opinion: the Commission acted correctly, by respecting the criteria on which Helmut Kohl and Theo Waigel's Germany had so insisted. He then pleaded in favour of a genuine "European economic government". For his part, the Co-President of the Green/EFA Group, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, said that the Commission "only sees things partially" and provides a poor interpretation of Germany's economic difficulties, which , he said, essentially stem from the enormous transfers to former East Germany. With this "small enlargement", Germany allows us to guess what the difficulties of the enlargement of the European Union will be financially-speaking, said the German Green, elected in France..