Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 13 March 2019 - Strasbourg

Establishment of the European Monetary Fund (debate)

  Nils Torvalds (ALDE). – Madam President, listening to this discussion, I sometimes get the feeling that we are suffering from economic amnesia. We don’t know the history. We are speaking as if the mismatches of the economy appeared with the euro. I’ll give you one example, just one example. Go back in British history to 1956. What you had in Britain in 1956 was a deficit budget and an over-valued pound and then you had the crisis there. Crisis mismatches have been part of the history of Europe since, well, since the beginning of history. There was one good German, even if German bashing has been very popular in this House. Willy Brandt, in 1969, came to a meeting of the European Council and said that Germany was ready to give 30% of its currency surplus to Europe as starting money for a European monetary fund, but on one condition: Europe had to be able to manage its economy and if it couldn’t, it shouldn’t come to this House and blame others for something it had done itself. So, thank you, but read the history and try to understand what this is all about.