Highlights:
- I believe that two of the major family values of the European Union have been under attack in the past two years. One of them is responsibility: the responsibility that everyone belonging to the same family owes to its partners. The second value that I believe is under attack is solidarity: solidarity that the Union itself owes to its individual members. Without these values we wouldn’t have the EU.
- The value of responsibility was unquestionably violated by a number of countries in Europe, and I would say by my country, as well, of course, in the past few years. There are some benchmarks of the Maastricht Treaty that all of us in Europe agreed to follow. So, when you don’t follow them, you have clearly violated your responsibility to work as partners. That is true and that is the story that was revealed at the end of 2009. And, unfortunately, the debate froze back then as if time had frozen. But time doesn’t freeze. In the past year and a half, Greece has applied a remarkable, unprecedented effort to return to the value of responsibility, both for its own sake and for its partners’ sake.
- The first thing that we should do is get rid of the rhetoric of punishment. It doesn’t help anyone to be talking about sinners and sins. In a Democracy, people need to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel when the measures that are being applied are so tough and so difficult. Now, if you are not a Democracy, maybe you can force people to swallow anything, but the greatness of who we all are, is that we are Democracies.
- The second thing we have to do is put an end to all the speculation about whether or not Europe is willing and able to deal with the twin challenges of debt and growth. We have to deal with both right now, and not with half measures.
- Greece has paid back every single euro that it has received and it will do so until the end of this program, with interest, and with high interest – every last euro. The Polish people, the German people are not losing money. So long as we continue in this path of fiscal consolidation, but also growth, the whole of Europe will be much stronger after this, not weaker. But those loans, especially the new package, are loans that have to be loans that allow my country and other countries the breathing space to apply the changes needed. Breathing space is key. Extremely high interest rates, compared to the average European ones, or very short repayment periods simply do not allow for that breathing space.
- As Europe, we also need to discuss very seriously what we do with the remarkable support mechanisms that we have put in place in the past year and a half. This is the EFSF, the mechanisms up to 2013 and the ESM. They have to be flexible. They have to be able to intervene in the market. They have to be able to buy, in my view, bonds on the secondary market.
- The third thing we need to do is to think much more broadly. What we have done up to now, with all these remarkable measures that we have taken up to now, is that we have put out fires. We see a fire burning there, we have a big meeting, we talk for a while about how to put it out, the fire expands a little more, it gets even worse. Eventually, we come and we throw water on it. That is solidarity. That is important. But we don’t really put out the fire and we don’t think, What we should be doing about all those arsonists who may want to be starting more fires in Europe? We are not thinking, How do we protect this forest? How do we make sure that the message we send to people is, “You cannot light another fire, it’s over, no more fires.”?
- I submit to you the way to do this is to think about three things; economic governance: we need it in addition to the monetary union that we have up to now. The monetary union itself, without economic and political union, has proven its limits. The second thing we need to think about is the participation of the private sector. I am referring to the Financial Transaction Tax. The private sector must participate. It has a major responsibility for what the world and Europe have been through in the past few years. The simple people should not be the ones who constantly and always bear the burden of a recovery. Finally, the controversial issue of Eurobonds. We have a common currency but we don't have a common bond.
July 20, 2011