kfajdsl/voxpopuli huggingface dataset:
on fiscal adjustments according to the latest commission forecast the fiscal stance in the eu is now expected to remain neutral in the coming years which means that fiscal policy will not wait on growth going forward.
but member states still need to secure long term control over deficit and debt levels. the pace of fiscal adjustment going forward should be differentiated according to the fiscal challenge faced by different member states.
we must act both on the demand and supply side of our economies.
i never said anything about that.
it is pretty clear that an institution based integration is much stronger than a rules based integration. the first type of integration is exactly supplied by the example of monetary policy.
the ecb accepts from the banks of all countries bonds government bonds as collateral only if these bonds are rated above a certain threshold. in the case of greece these bonds were below this threshold and years ago when greece accepted the programme and was complying with the programme we said that maybe we can waive this threshold and accept these bonds as collateral anyway.
and so we should also ask ourselves why is this so? what were the initial conditions that made monetary policy effective in one part of the union and not effective in other parts?
if we go back to the time before the euro we had a rules based monetary policy in a sense you remember that before the euro?
the member banks transferred these profits to the national budgets and these profits are now available as grants out of their own budgets as long as greece complies with the programme. therefore this operation reflects a commitment by member states not by the ecb.
there we have successfully in a sense integrated our monetary policies.
having said that we are ready to reinstate the waiver as soon as the governing council decides that the conditions for a successful completion of the programme are in place.
having said that we have got to be aware that not all countries are the same.
the thinking behind this was that maybe with the programme the economic situation will improve to the point where these bonds become better rated so we can accept that.
finally on fragmentation i think the ones who said that it has taken time for our monetary policy to go and find its way through the economy are absolutely right. it has taken a long time.
basis of the independence of the ecb without any other political affirmation.
loan dynamics have continued to recover with the growth in credit to the private sector turning positive in december for the first time since mid.
a common rule is only as strong as the common institution that can enforce
we believe that this will enable members of the public and markets to improve their understanding of our assessment of the economy and our policy responses in the light of evolving conditions in other words our so called reaction function'.
this still puts at risk the long term success of monetary union when faced with an important shock.
in fact we have already seen some positive effects of our measures.
fully applying the strengthened economic governance framework will support this objective.
to this end the ecb has an elaborate framework to discharge accountability to european citizens and your house and today's debate is a key element of this framework. taking up new tasks in the supervisory field required adding further elements to this framework
it will thereby further enhance the effectiveness of our monetary policy.
in addition we will start purchasing on the secondary market investment grade securities issued by euro area governments public agencies and european institutions.
these institutions are built on the principle of shared sovereignty and of strong enforcement of common rules. together these institutions clearly set the euro area apart from the arrangements that were in place prior to the start of the european monetary union.
today's session is also an opportunity to take a wider perspective on ecb policies.
a more forceful monetary policy response became necessary.
the past few years have been challenging for the conduct of our monetary policy in view of the environment of financial fragmentation which brings me to the topic of the foundation of our economic and monetary union.
the combined purchases of public and private securities will amount to eur sixty billion per month.
for instance we were the first major central bank to hold a regular press conference immediately after our policy meetings.
progress has been significant when it comes to common institutions at least as far as monetary policy is concerned.
two thousand and fourteen moreover most recently we have also seen a measurable improvement in indicators of business and consumer confidence.
in an environment of weak economic recovery and subdued money and credit developments risks were increasing that falling inflation expectations would feed back into weakening actual inflation.
as in the case of existing purchases of private sector securities the purchases of public securities have a high transmission potential to the real economy.
in my view there are two complementary responses to address this situation.
two thousand and sixteen in any case it will last until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation which is consistent with its aim of achieving inflation rates below but close to two over the medium term.
overall our measures will support economic activity underpin the firm anchoring of medium to long term inflation expectations and contribute to a sustained return of inflation towards a level below but close to two over the medium term. let me now briefly comment on the ecb's commitment to accountability and transparency.
they will further support a broad based easing of financial conditions in the euro area including those relevant for the borrowing conditions of euro area firms and households.
first the economies of the euro area member states need to become more resilient. this requires sound public finances but in particular at the current juncture decisive reforms of their economic structures.
to lay the ground for our discussion i would like to discuss three topics the ecb's monetary policy focusing on the rationale for our latest monetary policy measures;
in that context let me touch upon a topic that is of high relevance to you the ecb's accountability and transparency.
against this background we judged that the degree of monetary accommodation that had been introduced in two thousand and fourteen was insufficient.
and i believe the first months of operation of the ssm have proved our commitment to accountability in this domain as well.
finally one comment on the future of european monetary union governance.
at the same time in january two thousand and fifteen market participants were expecting inflation to return to levels closer to our policy aim only over a horizon which stretched well beyond any meaningful definition of medium term.
at the beginning of the european monetary union stood a clear commitment by member states to converge economically and institutionally.
with key interest rates at their lower bound the governing council of the ecb considered outright purchases of public securities to be the only remaining instrument which could be activated on a sufficient scale to broaden and strengthen the measures already in place.
accountability of the central bank is the essential counterpart to its independence.
the ecb also regularly publishes a variety of data on the execution of its monetary policy operations and the liquidity conditions of the eurosystem. but more recently we have decided to go one step further and to publish regular accounts of governing council monetary policy discussions
we now have not only one currency and one central bank but also one supervisor one resolution authority one crisis management mechanism and hopefully one capital markets union.
two thousand and twelve also evidence from the recent january two thousand and fifteen bank lending survey provides positive signals showing a further improvement in credit standards for all loan categories in the fourth quarter of.
through these accounts we are enriching the communication of the rationale behind our monetary policy decisions and seek to give a sense of the discussion that has taken place among governing council members and the main arguments that were exchanged.
but we have not yet reached the stage of a genuine european monetary union. economic convergence has not been as sustainable as was hoped for at the outset.
financial conditions in money and bond markets throughout the euro area have eased further. accordingly lending rates to households and firms have come down considerably.
second in the medium to longer term we need to move from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions so as to strengthen our economic policy governance.
i again call on the president of the ecb to acknowledge the role that his institution played in bailing out the irish banks at the cost of billions to our people and it is simply not good enough to continue to abdicate responsibility.
it was also the year when the central statistics office in ireland recorded that over two hundred and fifty people every day were leaving irish shores in an emigration wave that was a direct result of the austerity policies that were championed by the ecb.
when we look at the matter of banking debt it is quite apparent from listening to the discussions today that the ecb has provided no thought to or indeed mention of the huge amount of debt that irish generations are going to be saddled with.
it should also be remembered that this was a european financial crisis not just an irish one and the irish people have suffered beyond all proportion.
it says that we should look further and we are doing
so. the smp profits like any other profit have been distributed to all the central banks members of the ecb and the central bank members of the ecb have transferred their profits to their national budgets.
qe. qe is a broad based monetary policy expansion that has nothing to do with programme countries or
so at this stage i can simply say rest assured it is not something that we ignore; we are seriously thinking about this.
they are essential and a good complement for our pursuit of the primary objective of price stability.
but that is nothing to do with having a programme or not having a programme.
you seem to give a lot of responsibilities to the ecb;
it is pretty natural to make a financial investment confidence can be in a sense easier to get back than making a real investment that is going to last for many years.
and increased structural employment.
when we stabilise financial markets confidence in the financial markets returns first but confidence in real investment takes much longer and now we see the first signs.
as far as the substance is concerned we have to see that the present economic situation of low output big economic slack in the euro area and great cross country differences with a decline in potential output as well is mostly due to declining investment
so all in all the outlook is more positive than it was a few months ago.
the european parliament has been heavily involved by many of you in making sure that this proper separation would be designed exactly to avoid these conflicts of interest and frankly i must say that since the ssm became operative a few months
the only answer there is just ask them;
one lesson from the crisis is certainly that the banking channel upon which this continent has relied for all its history is not enough and has proved to be much more fragile than capital market based economies.
so. for omt countries we are doing so precisely to see whether our role in the troika could be in conflict with our role as provider of omt.
and the national budgets have transferred their profits to greece. so they are there available for financing.
bond issuance on capital markets has expanded greatly in the last two years.
most of the credit to smes still comes from the banks. that is why the ecb through the creation of the single supervisory mechanism and frankly even before by national supervisors has pursued the objective of strengthening making the financial intermediaries the banks more and more resilient so as to make them able to give credit.
it took courage and wisdom and initiative. i have three questions for him.
i would like to know from him when he thinks they might start to rise and by how much? question two he said that quantitative easing was the only remaining measure open to the ecb to deal with the financial crisis.
we will still be in the same position.
so the democratically expressed wishes of the greek people will be denied to them once again.
one might well ask how will they react to that?
well it just so happens that about the same time as this four months' extension of the bailout ends the eu member states must vote unanimously to continue sanctions against russia.
so the eu may well have gained four months but it has given the greek communist government an opportunity to threaten to use their veto and by so doing end sanctions against their fellow communists in russia.
the eu has not so much kicked the can down the road but rather rolled the can a few hundred yards towards president putin's panzers inviting both greeks and russians to trample all over it thereby conflating two of the eu's greatest catastrophes firstly
your promise to do whatever it takes to save the euro can only end badly.
on the other hand and you know this i find that frequently you have overstepped your role by actually stepping into political territory especially when you were advocating and sometimes intimidating governments into taking structural reforms which were politically oriented.
of course i respect political orientations but i have always said that it was not for central bankers to decide on that. but in the latest case when the greek finance minister declared his country bankrupt i recognised that you as the ecb had little choice but to take the decision that you took saying well if the finance minister says that his country is bankrupt
so there i recognise that you had no alternative.
i just want to say something about completing the genuine monetary union.
you are an independent person and so i would expect you to say the obvious there has been no monetary union ever in human history that has worked without being a true budgetary union a true fiscal union on the income side of the equation as well as on the expenditure side of the equation.
you used to say that.
this real economy oriented bonds purchase is very important because the qe has to operate on different national markets each with varying degrees of risk.
i believe the ecb must make a real contribution to improving growth and boosting employment creating jobs that will lift people out of poverty.
the commission's own figures show that this is not happening with significant increases in part time work and temporary contracts.
also the employment and economic differences between member states represent a major risk for both the eu's economic stability and social cohesion.
i hope that the accountability and transparency that mr draghi boasted about earlier will fully apply to any such exchange of views.
we are in our second chamber. we have a perfectly good chamber back in brussels.
we have hundreds of people displaced from their normal places of work to come here.
we are the worst hypocrites when it comes to this than any chamber i know.
past months have shown that the importance of energy security has never been as acute.
madam president while the amended version was an improvement it was still with a heavy heart that i supported this own initiative report since it was not consistent with the climate and energy package carried by a huge majority in this house on seventeen december. two thousand and eight just to remind us my own eu ets report which was the cornerstone of this package was carried by six hundred and ten votes for
sixty abstentions and twenty nine against.
the cooperation that is necessary across the eu and the need to take advantage of the stimulus packages currently launched by almost all member states and the commission underscore the need for investment in renewables to increase our energy security to decrease our carbon emissions and to wean us off our high dependence on fossil fuel albeit over an agreed timeline.
i have reservations about any reference to drilling in the arctic or exploration for alternative sources of oil such as tar sands.
it is just that we never seem to arrive.
we are constantly piling on more and more burdens and regulations that force industry out of europe and we have no chance whatsoever of meeting any of the goals of the lisbon strategy.
two thousand and ten with just one year to go before that self imposed deadline i cannot be the only person in this house who wonders and becomes more than a little sceptical about whether we will ever get there. we constantly pass resolutions and the commission constantly produces strategy documents telling us how we are going to get there.
when we deal with innovation here we have committees we have strategy documents we have votes we have everything but innovation unless you consider more paper creation to be innovation.
you may not have noticed but we have made very little progress so far. before i became a politician i used to work with a lot of innovators and help lots of start up companies.
it was a real contrast coming to the world of european politics to see how we dealt with innovation.
with the looming economic crisis the roma may be able to help solve some of europe's deepest problems.
equal rights and opportunities must be provided to all citizens of europe including the roma.
as you all know the population of the roma is ever expanding and consistently becoming a huge and influential force throughout europe.
with better regulation and a higher degree of cooperation nations may be able to provide work for this huge block of potential labourers.
the truth is that nothing can stop this correction interest rates were held too low for too long and now that the air has been pumped into the balloon it is going to come out again.
the debt will be paid by our children yet unborn and unbegot and nowhere more than in my country where every child is now born with a debt of gbp thirty zero because of the incompetence and incontinence of its government. as our national poet says this land of such dear souls this dear dear land. is. now leased out
i close again with the words of our national poet prevent it resist it let it not be so lest child child's children cry against you
we could try to rescue some of the victims but instead we engage in this pretence that we can stop the thing happening.
i die pronouncing it like to a tenement or pelting farm. ' and now on top of that national debt we are expected to contribute to these european recovery programmes.
or is the real economy actually people doing jobs of work and innovating and starting their own businesses?
therefore ensuring public access to the documents of the european institutions is the very least that those constituents could expect in return for handing over such large sums to the eu every year.
anything that we can do to improve access to give more information to the public on some of the things that perhaps some of our commissioners and others would rather keep confidential is very welcome.
i have to say that many of my constituents in the north east of england think they get very bad value for such a large sum of money.
in the eyes of many people the eu remains a very obscure and monolithic entity.
already we see whistleblowers and others that have been vilified and hounded out of their jobs for exposing confidential information. if all that information had been available in the first place then perhaps many of those over the top reactions would have been unnecessary.
we need to make certain that we still have secure jobs and sustainable careers for people when the economy begins to perform better and support key sectors such as the car industry.
the automotive sector is a model of how traditional industries should adapt in the years to come.
we have got to recognise that if we are going to create jobs we have to set the wealth creators free. we have to enable them to continue their spirit of free enterprise to create wealth to create jobs. but what do we do here? by regulation and debate what we seek to do is to choke off the very spirit of innovation the very spirit of entrepreneurship and we have continued to do that today. only today mr schulz
how does a country overcome structural problems such as poverty systemic corruption and severe human and minority rights violations?
but i would like to see the eu engage more with nigeria in long term projects that aim at overcoming these structural issues.
the country is regionally divided between christians and muslims.
in short all ingredients are there for a potential new civil war.
the violence after the two thousand and eleven elections and the boko haram killing sprees further contributed to the instability of the country.
the european union trades with nigeria mainly for oil and gas and in return we provide development aid.
it is unfortunate that alcohol sponsorship in sporting events was not included by the irish government in its alcohol bill earlier this year.
i welcome the reference in the report to a nutritional labelling regulation because the commission is dragging its feet.
it was meant to come forward in december with a report on the possibility of including alcohol in nutritional labelling with a view to proposing legislation.
well funded positive images of alcohol use from companies such as diageo outweigh those of public health campaigns and have a powerful influence on young people.
if we are able to know the calorie content of a mars bar what apart from industry concerns for their profit margins is stopping us from knowing the same information for alcoholic beverages?
information and education campaigns can play a key role here whilst the european commission should help to share best practice.
one of the world's largest drink companies diageo has recently stepped down from a so called responsible drinking' campaign in ireland where its attempts to tamper with and dampen the public health message were clear.
their historical presence is being systematically wiped out as cultural heritage is intertwined with both identity and territory.
the destruction of their religious and historical patrimony works in tandem with the direct physical violence against these communities.
they turn a blind eye to the fact that we are speaking about christians who are dying all around the world just because of their faith.
do not make them random victims of violence.
indeed in ireland when we export alcoholic beverages to the us they contain that label of a pregnant women with a line through her but we do not have it at home.
i personally have an aversion to the nanny state but i think that putting information on bottles containing alcoholic beverages is a sensible and reasonable idea.
i also think it is reasonable to consider labelling which will alert consumers to the dangers of drink driving.
in ireland we have had some success our roads are somewhat safer because of a sustained campaign and crackdown on drink driving.
labelling is just one possibility but given the often horrific consequences of drink driving i think we should consider all reasonable alternatives.
madam president progress in investigating the rana plaza building collapse ensuring satisfactory levels of health and safety in the workplace and the bangladesh government's reluctance to pave the way for trade union formation to represent workers' rights remains very disappointing. more importantly democracy is declining fast in bangladesh.
elections at both national and local level are held without the opportunity for the people to fully participate in a free and fair process.
the lack of free elections is the root cause of the political turmoil in bangladesh.
the companies named in this resolution should cough up the compensation they owe.