26 October 2011

European Parliament on the eurozone deal: relief but no time for celebration

They also stressed the need to give more emphasis to restoring growth, crucial for a sustainable answer to the crisis. Eurosceptics decried the transfer of powers to the EU level.

José Manuel Barroso (Commission President): "As early as November the Commission will be making new legislative proposals on further fiscal surveillance. This legislation will be developed by the European Parliament and the Council. We will need a Community approach to work our way out of the crisis."

Herman Van Rompuy (European Council President): "Markets will now see our strong determination and will now give us the time needed.  We need to improve our capacity to act... eurozone summits are perfectly natural but I will do my utmost to avoid divisions."

Joseph Daul (EPP, FR): "For the short-term we have obtained progress. Now however we have to keep moving forward, especially regarding implementation of what is decided. We need to also go much further on the social dimension even if the Treaties do not expressly foresee this - it is not possible to keep citizens on the frontline."

Martin Schulz (S&D, DE): "These measures just adopted could have been taken a year ago. We now need to focus on tax evasion. We cannot build Europe on social injustice. The Council would do well to listen carefully to the EP's demands because a Treaty change cannot happen without the EP."

Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, BE): "I am relieved. We risked having another debate here today. But a few good days on the markets will not mean that we have reached our goal. With the time we have bought we need to set up a new fiscal union because economic government is more than two meetings per year."

Jan Zahradil (EDR, CZ): "This package is only buying us time.Worse, we are at the very beginning of a massive fiscal transfer never seen before."

Rebecca Harms (Greens, DE): "I share the feeling of relief. But we continue seeing the pattern of too little and too slow. Why a haircut of 50 per cent when it is known that 60 per cent was needed? Why is the EFSF built up to €1 trillion when what we need is €2 trillion? We also need to considerably increase the transparency of our economic governance."

Lothar Bisky (GUE/NGL, DE): "I welcome the debt reduction for Greece. But this will not turn the situation around. By 2020 Greece will have a debt of €220 billion. The summit conclusions generally have come across clearly but I doubt that they are going to restore the confidence - the way we will be leveraging the EFSF is a financial trick."

Bastiaan Belder (EFD, NL): "There is no source for optimism because there are too many unknowns and loose ends."

Sharon Bowles (ALDE, UK - ECON chair): "We still need a solution to the fact that growth was built on piling up debt. We also need a solution to crisis management in the banking sector."

Press release

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