Mr President, representative of the Council, Commissioner, in my view, our economic policy is a combination of success and failure. The success, of course, is the euro, the failure is the actual economy, where there are two, interconnected problems. The low rate of growth and the high rate of unemployment. The reason for both is the same and lies in the low rate of investment in capital equipment during the last decade of the last century, accompanied by the collapse of public investment. Some people maintain that this collapse is a virtual collapse because it is due to a simple change of name, in that the private sector is investing where the public sector used to invest. But how are we to believe this when overall investments have fallen so low? Did public investment have to be throttled in order to support the euro? Did unemployment have to reach its present rate, albeit not as high as just two years ago, although it will no doubt rise again, Commissioner, in order to support the euro? I do not think so, but although no one admits it, this was the official policy up to the European Council in Lisbon. That was where the line was taken to adopt the new economy which is supposed to find a modern solution to Europe's economic problem and bring back full employment on the new basis of more advanced technology, the most advanced technology in the world. Nice words, nice ambitions, nice vision. Unfortunately it failed because this was when the bubble burst on the American stock exchange, especially in the new technology and telecommunications sector, which was supposed to lead us into a new era and which is now threatening to drag us into one of the biggest slumps of the twentieth century. It seems to me that these events have drawn a line under the Lisbon vision and that we need to go back to the drawing board. There is no way someone can have a full plan to present to you, not when all our study institutes deny the need for us to change our economic policy. But some things seem to be self-explanatory. The European economy needs investment, the private sector is not investing enough because we insist on preventing the public sector from supplementing its investments – is that how we are going to revive the private sector's interest? By refusing to make use of the possibilities offered by the Treaty and exempt investments from the definition of deficit in the Stability Pact? I heard Mr Della Vedova refer in trepidation to ‘deficit spending’. Things may have got out of hand in the era of ‘deficit spending’ but, let us not forget that, in that era, the rate of growth was 5% and unemployment never exceeded 1 to 1.5%, while our current economic policy, based as it is on a high degree of liberalisation of the markets, is a long way from being such a success. America came close in the last five years of the last century in a climate of excessive speculation and look where that has got us now. Also, I should like to ask you, Commissioner, as you did me the honour of allowing me to ask you in private: what is the scientific criterion for refuting your position that will make you tell us that our position has been refuted and that we need to change economic policy? As I am sure you know, without refutability there can be no scientific standpoint. We keep getting caught in a huge tautology and I am afraid that this is precisely the economic policy which you support.

Political group: PSE