Mr President, I am the rapporteur for the report on the Guidelines of the Economic Policies of the Member States. The idea was for us also to have voted on that report today. For the first time, we would have seen economic and employment policy guidelines coordinated in terms of time, but that was unfortunately not to be the case. As rapporteur, I pulled out all the stops so that we should be ready in time, but to no avail. It means that this report will not be presented until the June part-session, and by then it will be too late. It means that the Council will decide on the guidelines on the same day that we vote in Parliament, and the Council will not therefore be able to take account of our points of view. That is serious because it means that the important balance between the two processes will go to pot. Instead, the economic perspective will totally dominate. It is a shift we also see elsewhere in political life. It bodes well neither for the Lisbon process nor for the social Europe in which so many Europeans have placed their hopes and confidence. The EU now finds itself in a difficult economic situation, with weak demand, low levels of investment and growing unemployment in ever more Member States. What was of course needed was a clear overhaul of the economic guidelines, but the Commission continues, unfortunately, to support the Stability and Growth Pact and budget discipline and to believe in the possibility of saving our way out of the crisis. If, through having a common currency, it is not permitted to increase state expenditure and there is no possibility of regulation by means of flexible exchange rates, only the labour market remains. The measures proposed by the Commission are therefore concerned not so much with economics as with the labour market. It is a question first and foremost of reducing labour costs and the attendant social costs, but that leads to a reduction in domestic demand, which is incredibly important. That, of course, is what needs to be increased if we are not to enter a vicious circle. The Stability and Growth Pact was duly created in order to keep inflation under control during a period of growth when there was a perhaps justified anxiety about inflation. Today, the situation is different. Now, the same Pact is instead giving rise to deflation and growing unemployment. The policy of economic and monetary union binds all the eurozone countries to a common fate and to a policy of cut-backs leading to a type of collective decline. ‘United we stand and united we fall’, the refrain might go. It means, on the other hand, that those countries are well placed that are able to say no to the euro and to remain outside the policy of economic and monetary union. My own country, Sweden, is to hold a referendum on EMU in September, and, with each month that goes by, opposition to the euro is growing, both among the general public and among economic and political experts. We in the Confederal Group of the believe it would be infinitely better to continue with the Lisbon policy and to pin our faith in investment in skills, knowledge and innovation. Ideally, we need comprehensive public investment programmes strategically designed so as to strengthen demand both for products and services from the private market and for training, research and other such things that increase knowledge. That is the way forward, and if the actors in the market do not themselves succeed in meeting these requirements, it is we politicians who must create the conditions that induce companies to dare to think in the long term. It is impossible to save our way out of the crisis.

Political group: GUE-NGL