20 February 2013

VP Šefčovič: 'Confronting the crisis - New vision for Europe'

"We have sown the seeds of the real change that needs to come – now it is up to us to nurture those seeds, to help them grow and blossom into a fully-fledged economic, fiscal and political union."

We believe immediate priority should be given to implementing and enforcing the measures we have already agreed on economic governance (such as the six-pack I mentioned earlier), as well as the rapid adoption of the current Commission proposals such as the Single Supervisory Mechanism for banks. These can all be achieved within the next few months, if the willingness is there. I am glad to say that our discussions with the current Irish Presidency of the EU suggest that there is indeed a desire to move ahead rapidly in many of these areas.

But this is just the start of what will need to be done in the future if we are to achieve a genuine EMU. The Commission's Blueprint sets out some of the other future challenges:

• The creation of an instrument to help Member States implement structural reforms that have a negative short-term impact and a high political and economic cost.
• The creation of a Single Resolution Mechanism to deal with banks in difficulties.
• The creation of a new European right for a closer examination of national budgets.
• The creation of a European Redemption Fund as a means of reducing public debt significantly exceeding the criteria set out in the Stability and Growth Pact.
• The creation of eurobills as a means of fostering further integration of euro area financial markets.
• The creation of a proper fiscal capacity for the EMU.
• The creation of eurobonds to allow the common issuance of public debt based on that common fiscal capacity.

Some of these proposals will require Treaty changes, all will require a high level of commitment from Member States. As I said before, this will perhaps be the biggest challenge to Europe's commitment to a 'new vision', not least because it will involve Member States being ready to pool large parts of their national sovereignty in such a key area as economic and budgetary control.

That's why we need a firm political commitment to this new vision. With euroscepticism on the rise in many countries, and the threat of referenda hanging over every major transfer of sovereignty, it has never been more important to ensure that all our decisions are taken in complete transparency and, vitally, with the requisite level of parliamentary oversight – both national and European.

If the aim of EMU is to create a new vision of 'more Europe', where national interests are pooled in the name of the greater good, then we have to ensure that we do not inadvertently bring about 'less Europe' by seeming to be become less democratic and less accountable.

The creation of a genuine EMU is about getting the EU economy back on track and protecting it from future shocks. But this is only part of the picture. For the economy to grow again, for Europe to once again be a source of economic prosperity and jobs, then we need to be competitive...

I wanted also to briefly talk about a different vision: the vision of a two-speed EU. There are some that see a two-speed Europe as inevitable, a natural progression of the current status quo, with the eurozone countries having to develop at a different pace than the rest. But there are others who see a two-speed Europe as synonymous with 'Europe a la carte', where Member States are free to pick and choose their level of commitment and integration - something that risks fatally undermining the very essence of a unified Europe by creating a second tier of nations deemed unwilling or incapable of moving as fast as the rest.

I think the reality will be a combination of the two. In order to grow, the eurozone will have to become more deeply integrated – but this does not mean that those countries left outside the eurozone will somehow be moving at a different pace, or that they should be considered as somehow 'second class'. Indeed, we have made it clear that deeper integration of the eurozone must not exclude the others: the door must be left open for anyone to join in with that integration if they wish. Remember, all but two Member States have a legal obligation to join the euro, and will have to commit to the deeper integration in the future in any case: excluding them now would be illogical.

But it is more than simply a question of legal obligation: if there is one thing that I hope to have shown you today, it is that the future of the EU is interconnected, that what happens in one Member State has repercussions in all the others. So it is inevitable that deeper integration in the eurozone will affect all Member States – they will all develop together, not at different speeds but rather in parallel.

Full speech

© European Commission