Brussels, 08/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 8 October, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the G20 Summit, hailing the decisions taken by the world's top leaders (see EUROPE 9986). Following the plenary session debate before the Pittsburgh meeting on 24-25 September, the chairwoman of the Parliament's development committee, Eva Joly (Greens/EFA, France) complained about the EP's decision to delay voting on the resolution until after the Summit, arguing that MEPs were adopting the role simply of commentators on the outcome. The text adopted on Thursday reviews the main points discussed two weeks ago in Pittsburgh and clarifies some of the expectations of the Parliament.
MEPs were happy with the commitment made not to be unduly hasty in removing the incentives put in place to support growth and called, too, effective deficit “exit strategies”. They gave no indication of when such strategies should be implemented, saying only that they should be able to be implemented quickly, “as soon as the recovery permits it”. Priority should be given to restoring growth, and also, and especially, employment, stressed MEPs, approving the commitment by the G20 to tackle the employment crisis at international level and to strengthen support for those most at risk.
However, they were critical of the insufficient assessment of the main weaknesses in regulation and supervision that led to the financial crisis, and the lack of progress on funding the fight against climate change. They called for “speedy progress” towards the financial sector's playing its part in economic recovery and development, for example, through an international framework for a tax on financial transactions. Welcoming the calls and promises made by the G20 on improving supervision and regulation the EP said that “the European Union needs to work towards a stronger financial supervisory architecture with a single financial supervisory authority as an objective”. Substantial efforts had made to tackle uncooperative jurisdictions (tax havens), but these were “not yet sufficient”, MEPs said, and they called on the Commission to make the commitments on bonuses made at the G20 quickly into binding Community legislative acts.
With discussions on redistributing quotas and rebalancing to the benefit of the merging countries within the world financial institutions gaining strength, the EP also raised the issue of the external representation of the EU (though not explicitly within the International Monetary Fund). It felt that “the EU representation at the G20 meetings must be the object of an in-depth discussion between the three major EU institutions and the member states” and said it was “convinced that the European Union has to agree on a common position in international forums, particularly with regard to the G20 meetings”. It stressed that “there has to be a more coherent representation of the EU in international negotiations”. (A.B./transl.rt)