Mr President, Council representatives, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, Mr García-Margallo’s excellent report has highlighted the need to pin, from now on, the broad economic policy guidelines and the objectives relating to the coordination of Member States’ economic and social policies to the goals set by the decisions of the Lisbon European Council, particularly where investment in research, lifelong learning and European infrastructure are concerned and as regards ensuring the efficiency of public services while safeguarding the general interest which they must serve, and, in addition, as regards an active ageing strategy which will help to bring about a substantial increase in the active population and employment. This decision, which requires that binding stages in the implementation of the Lisbon strategy be provided for as an integral part of the broad economic policy guidelines, cannot fail to affect – and this is the subject of my report – the Stability and Growth Pact, which is still devoid of binding indicators relating precisely to growth and the quality of growth or to the coordination of budgetary policies, as Mr dos Santos rightly points out. My explicit question on this point, Commissioner, concerns the compatibility of the Lisbon objectives with the objectives of the Stability and Growth Pact. Do the Lisbon objectives also concern the EMU States and to what extent, and, if they do, how can we make them as binding as the objectives set in the Stability and Growth Pact? If the answer to this question is yes, as I believe it is, the problem then arises of how to coordinate and reconcile the different areas of Union intervention as regards economic policy, social and employment policy, sustainable development, financial stability and growth and achieve synergic interaction between them. Clearly, this is not a question of procedure but a choice which must impact on the objectives of the Stability Pact and the way it is applied. Indeed, in this new context, the application of the Stability Pact cannot just be concentrated in those periods in which there are clear risks of a shift away from the objectives and constraints of the Pact as regards budget deficit or public debt, constraints that we have no intention of questioning, especially during this difficult, uncertain period. Indeed, the Stability and Growth Pact ought to curb the behaviour of the EMU States in periods of growth too, in order to prevent decisions leading away from the Lisbon objectives paving the way, in precisely those periods, for further departure from the objectives of the Stability Pact. The Commission must acknowledge the difference between an economic policy which favours regular expenditures over public and private investment in periods of growth and a policy seeking to meet the Lisbon objectives in clear stages between now and 2010 in the areas of research and development, training and integrated European infrastructures. It must also realise the difference, at times of crisis or in the event of war, between an economic policy which seeks to reduce fiscal pressure across the board and a policy of boosting public and private investment, which the Commission itself should be able to see is in the common interest, not least in that it is bound up with European projects in the spirit of Lisbon. At this point, it is necessary to ascertain whether investment intended to contribute to the achievement of the Lisbon objectives makes things worse rather than better in the event of the danger of a shift away from the 3% constraint and whether it cannot be made compatible with greater financial rigour in order to comply with the criteria of the Stability Pact. I hope that similar considerations and opportunities will all be taken into account together at the forthcoming Spring Council, and I would quietly point out, by way of conclusion, that there has to be institutional coordination of economic and social policies in the euro zone, coordination capable of taking majority decisions and showing, not least in the work of the Convention, that the enlargement of the Union which we are determined to make every effort to achieve will not hinder the progress or dampen the vitality of the European Union in the search for new, more advanced forms of integration.

Political group: PSE