Brussels, 04/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - In his written responses to a questionnaire sent out ahead of his panel interview before the EP's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on 11 September, the candidate for the chairmanship of the European Central Bank (ECB), Claude Trichet, expressed the view that it would be "dangerous to the credibility of EMU as a whole to make changes to" the text of the Stability and Growth Pact, and stressed that "it would be a mistake to believe that in difficult times it is necessarily better, from the point of view of growth, to increase deficit". Mr Trichet explained that, based on an already high level of expenditure and deficit, if our citizens "feel that public expenditure and deficits are going in the wrong direction, their lack of confidence as consumers and investors will cancel out the positive Keynesian effects this expenditure may bring". In the final analysis, "respect for the stability pact boosts confidence and thus growth", wrote the governor of the Banque de France.
Mr Trichet believes that the stability pact is "an important aspect of the construction of EMU", and that when destiny is shared by virtue of sharing a currency, "we cannot allow budgetary policy to depend totally on the autonomous decisions of national authorities, or we will be running a serious risk of the EMU going awry". He also supports the Committee's strategy of ensuring a more focused monitoring of the structural aspects of deficits. He believes this is the way to go, because one of the major problems with implementing the Stability and Growth Pact "is that it is too easy to fulfil the nominal criteria" (i.e; unadjusted for cyclical effects) "in times of prosperity", which means that "no sufficient efforts are made to gain the appropriate buffer necessary for hard times".