Mr President, I should first like to thank the Commissioner and applaud his clear statement in the debate on these four reports. He said that the Commission did not wish either to make the Stability and Growth Pact more flexible or to adapt it, but that it simply wished to impose stricter standards when assessing the situation in the Member States. I consider this to be a better policy than the proposals made by Members from the other groups, in particular those put forward by Mr Trentin and Mr dos Santos. What Mr Trentin said here bears no relation to the report tabled by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, nor are his comments appropriate in a debate on the subject of the annual assessment of the stability and convergence programmes. In school I would say to Mr Trentin that he had strayed from the subject. In his draft report there was not a single word about it, and it was only the amendments tabled by the various different groups that brought the report closer to the issue at hand. Today you clean forgot about it once again. I am also grateful to the Commissioner for reminding us once more of the Lisbon objectives, which are not at odds with the Stability and Growth Pact and budgetary consolidation, but in fact encapsulate all of the framework conditions: a flexible labour market and the need to increase investment, reduce taxes, and invest in research and training. This cannot however absolve the Member States from applying strict standards in their budgetary policy, as prescribed by the Commission. In the Trentin report we have at least demanded that in future the Commission be able to send out the blue letters on its own, without this being dependent on a vote in the Ecofin Council in which the offenders are indirectly involved. We want to strengthen the Commission's independence. The proposals that have been made in the reports are inconsistent in many respects. This is shown by the fact that for two years now there has been a consistent policy of calling the Stability and Growth Pact into question and of undermining it in every possible respect and with every possible proposal, with the sole aim of ensuring that the consolidation of state budgets in several Member States is no longer recognised as a necessary precondition for stable finances and a stable economic and monetary policy. It is of course not the case that there is insufficient room for manoeuvre. Eight out of twelve Member States in the euro zone have already managed to balance their budgets. The offenders who are not sticking to the rules are the ones who are now calling for the Stability and Growth Pact to be changed. Those that have stable budgets and that are even making a surplus are penalised because in the euro zone everyone is in the same boat, my own country, Germany, as much as any other. If Germany with its considerable economic power does not comply with the Stability Pact then it puts the stability of the euro at risk. We cannot deflect attention away from the Member States' responsibilities by correcting and retouching the rules. The golden rule that appears in some of Mr dos Santos' amendments is of no use here either. There is no such thing as good or bad debt. There is just debt: debt in investment and infrastructure and consumer debt. Mr Trentin, I am sure that you are familiar with the scala mobile, the debt that brought the Italian State to its knees over the last twenty years, when new debts were repeatedly accumulated, with the unions playing along with it, but no way out was found. The European model has brought lower inflation and stable monetary policy conditions. That is what we should keep as our basis, what we must be rigorous about keeping as our basis. Finally, I should like to say to our Swedish Members that we welcome the fact that Sweden wishes to join the Economic and Monetary Union. We will do all we can to help it to do so, but we ask that it be under the conditions laid down in the Maastricht Treaty. If the government does not yet meet them – independence of the central bank or even the issue of two-year membership of the European Monetary System – then it needs to address that; it must not be allowed to let it slip. In this respect we have every reason to thank the Commission for the line that it is taking.

Political group: PPE-DE