Brussels, 12/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's committee on economic and monetary affairs held, on Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 February, what has become its traditional meeting with national parliamentarians from the 27 member states. National MPs were invited to Brussels to discuss the current economic and financial crisis and ways to address the situation. The need for recovery plans was underlined by all those participating, who stressed how important it was to ensure that the banking and financial sector operates properly again. This goal remains essential for the success of measures taken to date, Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Wednesday, stressing that compliance with and implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact must help to improve the financing capacity of member states.
In order to face up to the challenge of the growing gap between rates at which states borrow on financial markets (“spreads”), the chairperson of the parliamentary committee, Pervenche Berès, suggests for her part that a quid pro quo strategy should be adopted. According to the French Socialist, member states of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) should pool their debt up to 60% of GDP and agree, in exchange, to “create an effective and proactive system of multilateral surveillance, a European IMF, the EMF or 'eurozone monetary fund'”.
Chairing the session was Jan Hajda, who is also chairman of the national economy, agriculture and transport committee at the Czech Senate. He stressed how important it was to facilitate SMEs' access to credit. This is the objective of the European Investment Bank (EIB), said EIB President Philippe Maystadt, who set out his bank's approach for granting loans: “For every euro we lend to a bank, it needs to prove that two euros are made in new loans to an SME”. He nonetheless pointed to the limits on EIB intervention which, in the current situation, is increasingly faced with competition from member states on the loans market and which at the end of the day reduces the bank's possibility of raising funds at affordable rates for SMEs.
“The biggest risk of all is protectionism”, pounded out Miroslav Kalousek, Czech Finance Minister, on Thursday. He takes the view that, “in the long term, protectionist measures would be a far greater danger than a fall in GDP”. He added: “Protectionism would be the death of us”. He called for a common stance to be taken by EU member states with a view to the G20 on reform of the financial system. The logic behind the eurozone is that the European Central Bank (ECB) should have its supervisory powers strengthened, said Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi, a member of the institution's executive board in Frankfurt. “The ECB is ready to assume responsibility for these tasks”, he said, adding that “coordination in Europe is credible only if it is based on an institution which offers and ensures confidentiality, independence and efficient decision-making. (…). There is such an institution today - it is the ECB”. He expected the European Commission to make a proposal along these lines under Article 105§6 of the Treaty, “as there is a consensus”. (A.B./transl.jl)