Madam President, Commissioner, my fellow Members will not be surprised if I tell you straightaway that I am in almost complete disagreement with my esteemed Liberal fellow Member’s intervention. I think that, at the end of this legislature, it is time to briefly take stock of economic policy in the European Union. Economic policy includes a Lisbon agenda whose philosophy we could certainly share, but whose implementation is, in fact, deeply unbalanced, since it concentrates on the liberalisation of the sectors and neglects the social and environmental objectives included in the agenda. There is, however, another part that is definitely lacking, and this is macroeconomic policy at European Union level, which, if it exists at all, does so only through a Stability and Growth pact. The policy that has been followed in recent years, particularly by France and Germany, has consisted of making an effort in relation to budgetary policy, in an attempt to reduce deficits and debt at the same time as decreasing public revenue, in the hope that this can all be resolved by an increase in growth. This scenario did not work. We have very weak growth, increasing unemployment and an increase in disparity in income between different social groups, with no reduction in exclusion and poverty, in one of the richest regions of the world. I think that there are alternatives. These have been discussed within the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs but without success, or at least without achieving a majority. There are alternatives that consist, in particular, of making efforts in relation to supply, certainly, but also substantial efforts in relation to spending. Is it normal that European savings should be financing an increase in military spending in the United States? I formulate the problem in these terms, which is how it must be formulated. There is, therefore, room for a relaunched neo-Keynesian policy, which relies fully on the size of the internal market within the context of a Union of twenty-five and on the need to increase public and private investments. Maybe the growth initiative is moving in the right direction, but it is inadequate in terms of both quantity and quality. We need to coordinate the budgetary policies of the Member States and the social and environmental convergence rules, particularly concerning working conditions, salary progression – yes, salary progression – and the environment. Finally, I would like to end on the fiscal issue. It is a point we have discussed at great length. I would simply like to tell Mr Schmidt that I was struck by a French Press Agency dispatch, a statement by the Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Persson, which said that if the candidate countries continued to decrease corporate tax as they were doing, it would no longer be possible to agree to finance these candidate countries through the structural funds. We would do well to think about this kind of observation, and I maintain – and I am weighing my words carefully here – that those who do not want to subject corporate tax to the system of qualified majority voting laid down in the European Constitution are irresponsible and will have to face ever harsher scenarios of fiscal competition, which will unravel our systems of social protection.

Political group: Verts-ALE