30 January 2013

ECON Committee: "Parliaments should be given more control over EU's budget recommendations"

Parliaments should have a greater say over EU recommendations for Member States' budgets to prevent citizens opposing reforms. That was the conclusion of a two-day debate between MEPs and 100 of their national counterparts.

They met in Brussels on 29-30 January to discuss the European Semester, the annual cycle of economic policy coordination that aims to bring Member States' economic policies closer together. They also underlined the need to tackle unemployment, especially among the young.

European Semester

Every year the Commission publishes its annual growth survey, which sets out priorities and identifies countries at risk.Once the general priorities and country specific recommendations have been adopted at EU level, Member States have to include them in their national budgets for 2014. However, the recommendations can have far-reaching implications for countries' taxes, labour market, unemployment benefits and pensions.

Alain Lamassoure, a French member of the centre-right EPP group who is the chair of the EP's budget committee, stressed the need for coordination as Member States' national budgets are interdependent: "Ireland's population makes up less than 1 per cent of the EU total, and Greece's gross national product is less than 2 per cent of that of the EU as a whole. Yet their budgetary problems have kept us busy for a long time."

Need for democratic control

As the recommendations will affect the lives of all citizens, the new economic governance system should be subject to stronger democratic control by the European Parliament and national parliament, acknowledged MEPs and their national colleagues during the two-day conference. This is especially vital as some people question whether austerity is the best cure for the crisis.

French Social Democrat MEP Pervenche Berès, chair of the employment committee, said: "This issue is important at a time when several economists have acknowledged that the negative multiplier effects of austerity measures on employment and social conditions have been underestimated".

Press release

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