Marianne Thyssen, on behalf of the PPE Group. – (NL) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is true that the EMU is still limping despite the dozens of measures taken in recent years. The monetary side of things is fully integrated, but the economic base, including the banking system and fiscal union, remain too fragmented at the present time. However, this week we can make another step in the right direction with the adoption of the ‘two-pack’, the proposals for which have just been explained by rapporteurs Gauzès and Ferreira.

Mr President, the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) has worked very hard to ensure that we get two effective reports here on the table. My hope now, this time, is that all the groups will take their share of the responsibility.

In the Ferreira report, we have been careful to preserve the core of the Commission’s proposal, to establish a link between financial stability and growth and jobs (which is a ‘both together’ scenario rather than an ‘either/or’ one), to ensure greater respect for national parliaments and to guarantee the independence of Member States’ budgetary institutions.

Moreover, we have integrated a number of key issues from the budget treaty into this piece of Community legislation, in particular, those relating to binding numerical fiscal rules, an automatic correction mechanism in domestic law and the concept of economic partnership programmes for countries in the excessive deficit procedure.

What we have not accepted, nor will accept, is an attempt to weaken the Growth and Stability Pact. We cannot support that because we do not believe that we can solve the debt problem by creating even more debt and, equally, because we do not want to be complicit in making choices that will both burden the next generation and cripple the badly needed restoration of confidence in the short term. We need that confidence, inter alia, for the purposes of further fiscal integration, to which we in the PPE Group, too, are open. Open for a debate on the merits of types of common debt issuance, such as eurobonds and a redemption fund.

Nevertheless, this is about sums of money and profound reintegration of such an order that we need to be certain that the conditions and timing are right. That is why we cannot simply slide in a whole new chapter into the articles of this regulation, at the drop of a hat as it were. What we are in favour of, however, is the review clause, which provides the necessary openings and which we in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs have amended precisely for that purpose.

Finally, as far as economic growth is concerned, we, too, want to collect the required resources. However, setting up a fund quickly in this legislative text, as large as the entire current annual budget of the European Union, without even saying where those resources are coming from, would be implausible.

Ladies and gentlemen, the PPE Group remains consistent and will vote in the same way tomorrow as we have previously voted in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.