Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank the Commissioner very much for reminding us all once again of the corner stones – not only because these are uncertain times, but also because this has been a very confusing debate – and for not setting them against each other either, but reminding us that they are principles of European economic policy. I should like to start where Mr Gasòliba i Böhm off. We are not setting new objectives. We are not making new promises or developing new hypotheses and analyses. What we are doing is finally taking ourselves seriously. If you do not take yourself seriously, then others will not take you seriously either. Some of us complain about the common principles of economic policy and at the same time criticise the fact that they are not respected. We regret the fact that growth, productivity and employment are falling, and that we are not making up ground but are lagging behind, and some of us think that the response to this diagnosis is more state intervention and more debt. Do the Members on the really believe this, even though at the same time we have to acknowledge that we do not even meet all of the objectives that we have set ourselves? We talk about the rules, but at the same time we say – at least some of us do – that the rules should not be respected in such and such a case by such and such a country. At the same time, we regret the crisis of confidence in Europe about many economic policy measures and the principles and objectives of the European Union. You only create confidence with accountability and you only create accountability if you keep to and act on the things you resolve to do, both at European level and in the Member States. That is why I say very clearly on behalf of my group that we say ‘yes’ to the internal market. If we say ‘yes’ to the internal market however we must finally see to it that the barriers in the internal market are eliminated, that we really do create an action plan for financial services, that we really do implement the Risk Capital Action Plan, that we really do make the Charter for Small Enterprises a reality. We say ‘yes’ to competition policy. But that also means that we must, at last, eliminate tax provisions that distort competition. For some types of tax, such as value-added tax, energy tax, corporation tax and the taxation of pension funds, a convergence programme is necessary. We say ‘yes’ to the Lisbon strategy, but if we say ‘yes’ to the Lisbon strategy then we also have to say ‘yes’ to a model of the market economy that takes account of environmental and social concerns and does not constantly play the market off against social security. This also means that we finally need to ensure that with each piece of legislation we identify its economic impact and its impact on employment and the environment before we adopt it, rather than waiting until afterwards to be allowed to complain about the consequences. We say ‘yes’ to a benchmark. We must learn from each other. And we say ‘yes’ to the Stability Pact because it provides an ordered framework, and that is why we also say ‘no’ to the golden rules, because they undermine the Stability Pact and we would thereby be stabbing the Commission, the guardian of the Treaties, in the back and betraying the Stability and Growth objectives.

Political group: PPE-DE