Responsibility instead of pipe dreams and feel-good projects

The EPP Group criticises the Socialists and the Greens for pushing for more public debt in today's vote in Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

The Committee voted on its report on the Annual Sustainable Growth Strategy 2020 as part of the European Semester Process, the annual review of the sustainability of Member States' budgets. The report did not receive a majority of votes among Members. Markus Ferber MEP, Spokesperson of the EPP Group responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee explained:

“The European Parliament has yet missed another excellent chance of getting involved in the European Semester process. The Socialists, the Greens and the Social Democrats went so far overboard with their pipe dreams of refocussing the European Semester that reaching any sort of consensus was impossible. If we follow the Social Democrats and the Greens, competitiveness and responsible fiscal policy should not matter in the Semester. Instead, everything would be about spending as much money as possible on debt-financed delusionary feel-good projects thereby paving the way for the next crisis”.

Enikő Győri MEP, EPP Group negotiator of the report, pointed out: "The united left’s proposals were not in line with the EU treaties, integrating topics into the European Semester that would seriously damage the sovereignty of the Member States. If they were accepted, we would have faced again debt and deficit increase as well as loss of workplaces. During the negotiations, the EPP Group was trying to reach a compromise and a balanced, realistic text, but our efforts were not honoured. We cannot allow EU economic stability to be damaged, therefore we could not vote in favour of this report".