Mr President, on behalf of the Group of the , I would like to express our deep concern about the current crisis relating to the Stability and Growth Pact. Mr Tremonti, as a respected legal expert, you must acknowledge that the rules cannot be ignored in this way. When the question of form is raised, we are told we need to talk about policy. Fine, let us talk about policy, but first of all, if there is a structure, if there are rules, they have to be respected. One of the gravest problems right now is that Ecofin as a whole does not have a Community culture. It did not demonstrate any sense of Community when it acted as it did in the meeting on the Stability Pact, nor when it proposed the amendments which disturb the balance of powers between the Council and Parliament, despite having no authority to make such proposals. Consequently, I think that Ecofin’s first task should be to read the Treaties and respect them. There are three fundamental issues at stake at the moment. Firstly, the present and the future of the Stability and Growth Pact. The Stability and Growth Pact was created before monetary union took place. Now that we have monetary union, we ought to revise the Pact to include the new elements. What cannot be allowed, as we have been saying for months, is for the Pact to have been breached in 2000 and a bad precedent established. What we are discussing here, although this is not a conference of forensic experts, is whether or not the Stability Pact is dead. The problem is which countries will the Pact apply to now? What about Portugal? What is happening with Ireland? Are they any different? It is therefore very important to get the Stability and Growth Pact back on the rails and to enable the Commission to make constructive proposals. The real issue is not whether the Pact is dead or not, but the fact that it is not being respected or applied, which is a much more serious matter at this time. The second question – and here I agree with Minister Tremonti who raised it with support from Parliament and with whom we successfully revived the Delors plan – is why the European economy is not a driving force even though it has the potential to be one. This is why we have been in favour of the action plan from the outset. However, in the current situation, that motor is not even starting, and that in turn is increasingly battering public confidence. I think that, aside from the need to update the Stability and Growth Pact, we also need to think about a point raised by Commissioner Solbes: economic governance. We are not calling for the Stability and Growth Pact to be included in the Constitution, but we must remember that in the Convention working group chaired by my colleague Mr Hänsch, all the economic representatives were playing very defensively – much like the Italian football team – and seeking to block any progress on economic governance in the Union. This is extremely serious. Why is it so serious? Because at the moment we do not have any stronger instruments. Compare our situation with that of the United States: we have a central bank which only looks at inflation, and a Stability and Growth Pact which is not being respected and which does not take that element of economic governance into account. Minister Tremonti talked about factoring in economic cycles. In the United States, before making a proposal to Congress, the Federal Reserve is actually required to take into account inflation, employment and economic activity. These are factors which need to be taken seriously and now is the time to raise these issues. Now is also the time to ensure that the Stability and Growth Pact will have a future. For this reason, Mr President, I think we have a responsibility to respect the Treaties and to make sure that Ecofin follows the same rules as everyone else. (Applause)

Political group: PSE