Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, mention has already been made of the fact that the rapporteur, Karl von Wogau, is unable to be here. He himself explained why during his intervention on the Lamfalussy report. Because the order of business was changed at such short notice, he was unable to change his appointments so that he could be here in person. I should like to point out that the Lamfalussy report and this economic report were originally scheduled for the beginning of the day and that the rapporteur arranged this evening’s discussion with voters in his constituency some time ago. May I apologise on his behalf once again. I shall endeavour to do my best under the circumstances. There are a number of points which I wish to address. First, this is the last year before euro notes and coins are introduced. The internal market of the European Union will then become a real European home market, at least for the members of the euro zone. Twelve Member States will belong to this European home market, in which individuals and companies will all share a common currency. It is therefore right and proper that we should carry out a careful analysis of the European economy in this context. This has now already begun: the forecasts for the current year and the analysis of the status quo are basically optimistic, although they do of course contain a number of risk factors, which I shall come to in a moment. One positive factor which deserves a mention in any critique or proposed improvement is the relatively high rate of growth in our Gross Domestic Product. Another positive factor is that the rate of unemployment is falling and we have created 2.5 million new jobs in the European Union over recent years. Yet another positive factor is the improvement in public finances – and the concomitant reduction in the rate of inflation – and long-term price stability. So much for the pros. However, there are two factors which need to be mentioned which could give cause for concern: the first is the present economic climate in the United States. Growth in the United States is slowing down and, given the impact of strong growth in the USA on European trade, this may undermine the EU economy although, on the positive side, we are becoming increasingly immune to economic developments in America and this represents a positive balance and positive justification for our measures. The second factor is the slowdown in the European economy. According to forecasts, the average rate of growth will be 2.8%. I should therefore like to state quite unequivocally that we need to call on the Member States again today to do more to translate the will to engage in reform into practice and to implement sustainable structural measures. We must be critical of the fact that consolidation efforts have come to a standstill in numerous countries. I would just point out that we should be even more critical of consolidation efforts in that the majority of countries have still not met their self-imposed targets in the stability and growth package despite the boom in the economy. The second area which we need to touch on is the fact that we must congratulate the ECB because its “steady hand” policy has proven to be the right policy. The ECB should continue on this stability-oriented course and should also implement its own European stability-oriented policy. We also have a few demands. The rate of inflation must be kept below 2% in the second half of the year. The telecommunications, mail, energy and railway sectors must be liberalised quickly and in a balanced manner. We need to step up efforts in education and training. We need a more flexible labour market and we need structural reforms of the markets for goods, services, capital and labour to be speeded up. Mr President, allow me to close by saying that the main request in Karl von Wogau’s report is contained in the reference to the common principles which derive from our social market economy principles, i.e. freedom and democracy, competition, price stability and sustainable growth, subsidiarity, solidarity and private property and the responsibility not only of the employer towards the employee but of both towards the future, and hence for ensuring that the social market economy evolves into an eco-social market economy.

Political group: PPE-DE