Brussels, 27/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - After sessions on the Lisbon Strategy (EUROPE 8911), and the financial perspectives (EUROPE 8921), the European Parliament held a meeting on 25 April between national and European members of parliament on the coordination of European economic policies. The president of the economic and monetary committee, French Socialist Pervenche Berès, welcomed this new opportunity to “learn to work together” and said that the 75 parliamentarians from 24 Member States (only the British representatives were missing, due to the election campaign), and the many contributions that had been sent in, were a sign of their institutions' increasing involvement in this area.
After the relaunch of the Lisbon Strategy and the revision of the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), the Presidency must now bring the Member States' positions closer together on the thorny issue of the financial perspectives, said Luxembourg youth minister Alex Bodry, describing the task as “much more chancy”. Written contributions from the national parliaments show willingness to take part and support for the simplification of the integrated guidelines (IGL) and for national action plans (NAPs), but also “more contrasting responses”, especially on the possibility for more intense cooperation. “We have not all come here to try to harmonise all of our national debates; this dialogue should be used instead to find ways of integrating the European dimension into the national debate”, Mr Bodry replied. If progress on the Lisbon Strategy has to date not been “quick enough or coordinated enough”, it would nonetheless be “wrong to think that by changing the method, the results can be changed too”, stressed Luxembourg minister for the economy, Jeannot Krecké. We must “explain the scope of our actions to the citizens”, because this is what their “ownership” and the achievement of objectives and reforms depend on, he added. A national MP for 25 years, Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Joaquin Almunia said that European issues should be “decoded” so they could be debated by the national parliaments. This change in the language is needed in debates where the future of Europe is at stake, he said. Mr Almunia called on his audience to “attack the structural weaknesses of the EU above all”, adding: “the problem is not down to the imbalance in public finances- the situation is far worse in the US and Japan- nor to high interest rates- they haven't been this low for 30 years”. “National policies must now be linked to the criteria of the growth strategy and to budgetary stability alike”, he said.