23
Apr
2024
Watch
Effective coordination of economic policies and multilateral budgetary surveillance - Speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure – amending Regulation - Requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States – amending Directive (joint debate – Economic governance)
Mr President, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen, in order to change Europe in deeds and not in words, it is first necessary to radically change the Treaties, starting with economic governance. But the new version of the pact, instead of promoting a real investment policy, proposes reforms still animated by punitive objectives and a strongly pro-cyclical system dictated only by the deficit-to-GDP ratio and by outdated short-sighted budgetary constraints and conditionality that, together with State aid rules and an imperfect ECB statute, does not remove the limits of the previous one in the slightest, but rather amplifies them. Can the ambitious and costly goals on defence, energy independence and digital in the coming years be reasonably achieved with the spending limits that this new stability pact will also impose on states? Instead of conceiving a truly sustainable and easily applicable one, the trilogue resulted in an even more strongly pro-cyclical regulatory monster, pejorative compared to Commissioner Gentiloni’s proposal of April 2023, which is impossible to comply with and will not lead to any hoped-for growth. If the Treaties are not amended beforehand, starting with the annex to Article 126 of Lisbon, Protocol No. 12, Article 1, which sets the convergence criteria of 3% and 60%, no Stability Pact can generate growth, as if it did not adopt the so-called Monetary Statute, which is present in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in Articles 123, 124 and 125. The reduction of the debt-to-GDP ratio must occur mainly not with the real cut in primary current expenditure and with the increase in taxation, i.e. with an exclusive reduction of the deficit, but by stimulating growth, with expansionary policies with a high multiplier coefficient. You don't know John Maynard Keynes in this Chamber? This pact will accentuate asymmetries, social injustices, divergences and discord among the peoples of Europe and will not allow the growth that we all hope for and condemn us to an inexorable decline, relegating us last among all the world's economies.