Economic and monetary affairs

Growing unemployment especially among the young has been one of the worst consequences of the current economic crisis. Youth unemployment has risen to an unprecedented high level, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe, as can be seen in the infographic. This Wednesday MEPs will discuss what can be done to boost employment and kick-start the economy.

In the wake of the financial crisis several euro zone countries are having to pay dramatically higher interest rates to borrow on international markets. Last year, the European Commission published a green paper looking at the possibility of issuing to help struggling euro zone members finance debt, by offering safe investment opportunities for investors. MEPs were scheduled to debate the issue on Thursday but the it has been postponed until the next plenary session later in February.

Amidst the backdrop of another round of downgrades from credit rating agencies, MEPs and experts convened to discuss how to reduce the reliance of credit rating agencies, improve transparency and discuss the rotation proposal suggested by the European Commission, during an Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee public hearing chaired by Pablo Zalba Bidegain (EPP, ES) on Tuesday.

With the EU economy suffering under a burden of high levels of public debt, the members of the Economics Committee are turning their attention to solutions including eurobonds and more active market calming policies by the European Central Bank and are also looking at the role of the credit rating agencies that recently downgraded the debt of nine euro zone countries.

In a hectic six months, MEPs negotiated a 2012 budget that met EP concerns about growth, innovation and employment and got stuck into deciding how the EU long-term budget should look in future as well as the reform of farm policy. The EP marked the momentous events in the Arab world by awarding this year's Sakharov prize for freedom of thought to five Arab Spring activists.

Last autumn the EU agreed to tighten financial supervision in the private sector, in an effort to head off any future financial crisis, now the public sector is under the spotlight as the European Parliament tackles dangerous imbalances in EU economies and considers new rules meant to limit the growth of debt and deficits in the member states. On 28 September MEPs finally approved the so-called "six- pack" of new rules. Read on to find out more about its passage through Parliament.

Reining in spend-thrift governments and making sure macroeconomic imbalances do not undermine economic growth are the two main goals of the economic governance package on which the Parliament and the Council tentatively agreed 20 September and due to be voted in plenary Wednesday. We talked to parliament's lead negotiator Dutch Christian Democrat Corien Wortmann-Kool who said the package does not focus only on reducing debt but also provides incentives for growth-friendly reforms and policies.

Bad credit was one of the root causes of the financial crisis that sparked the current debt crisis. A report by Spanish Socialist Antolín Sánchez Presedo looks at how to better protect borrowers and put Europe's credit industry on a more solid foundation. Ahead of its presentation to the Economic Affairs Committee Wednesday, he told us more.

Mario Draghi won wide support as the next President of the European Central Bank Wednesday when 33 of 39 MEPs on the Economic Affairs Committee voted in favour of his candidacy. The whole Parliament will vote on 23 June. During an exchange of views, Mr Draghi's technical skills were widely praised, but some MEPs were critical of his work for US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Despite an encouraging, but fragile, recovery in the past couple of months, MEPs haven't lost sight of the continuing economic and social hardship in the European Union. On 19 April, MEPS from the Economic Committee backed a legislative package introducing tougher sanctions to address the root causes of the crisis: a worrying build-up of economic imbalances within European economies and the propensity of governments to finance spending by getting deeper into debt.