Mr President, I did support Mr Katiforis’s efforts to give a bit of an impetus to our resolution on economic policy. In the end, however, the report that we voted does not provide any real options and that is why my Group does not support it. The Union’s economic policy stands out for its passivity and its dogmatism. The Council, the Commission and the Central Bank are quite content and will not move an inch and the European Parliament has not managed to take up the challenge. Our economic policy is demonstrating passivity in the face of a situation that is growing worse and in the face of the criteria that we would have to meet to ensure the sustainable development of the European Union. The Central Bank tells us that, in the short-term, it should not intervene, since it is concerned with the medium-term. With regard to the medium-term, however, it refers us to the structural reforms. To put it plainly, monetary policy and budgetary policy must serve neither regulation of the present economic situation nor sustainable development. This is clearly absurd. What, however, do we say about it? We do not manage to come up with anything significantly different, despite Mr Katiforis’s efforts for public and private investment, highlighting the current situation of under-investment. In his explanatory statement and as he has repeated this morning, Mr Katiforis insists on the fact that public investment must take precedence over the concern to reduce public debt. The position we have finally adopted, however, is dogmatic with regard to public finances and to the stability pact. Mrs Randzio-Plath has spoken this morning, and not for the first time, on the quality of public finances and taxation. I think that this is the way forward. The reality of the situation, however, if you look at all of our resolutions and texts, is that they are all concerned with reducing taxation and with reducing public and social spending. We are not succeeding in implementing this line of reform, which is intended to bring about a qualitative improvement. Take, for example, our resolutions on reducing social security contributions coupled with wage moderation. Our social and public spending contributes to keeping workers poor. We are subsidising low-paid jobs and when it comes to expenditure, we know that massive public investment is needed and that public money is essential to make this investment, but we do not want to suffer the consequences. It is the structural reforms that are given the most prominence, reforms that were conceived solely as a form of deregulation, as a sort of panacea, whereas in reality, the new problem, which is the new economy, is an organisation of the market designed to achieve sustainable development and social cohesion. This requires a large contribution from public funds. We talk about lifelong training, but we have no policy in place in this field and where aid for energy policy is concerned, we have made no progress at all. The same thing applies to transport policy and as for an industrial policy, we simply have none. All of this would require a real increase in investment. Ladies and gentlemen, if we wish to give economic policy its rightful place in Europe, I hope that, in addition to the first strategies that I mentioned just now, but which have not achieved success, we can prove that we are up to the task of making it a reality.

Political group: GUE-NGL