Ramon Tremosa i Balcells, on behalf of the ALDE Group. – Madam President, we have had great news lately in the eurozone. For the first time in a while we are feeling more optimistic about the future of our project; that is great news. But before we rush into asking for more new instruments, maybe we should use all our energies to make sure that the current ones work properly. Implementation and enforcement are fundamental for our future. A good application of EU law is basic in order to regain the support of our citizens and increase the efficiency of our monetary union.

For the future of the euro we need to ensure that all Member States comply with the relevant EU economic legislation. Take the Late Payments Directive, for example. As you well know, more than one million jobs have been lost in the south of Europe in recent years due to the bad practices on payments by central banks and big enterprises, forcing thousands of solvent SMEs to close. A business is only made when it is cashed. This is the basis of our model. We need to ensure this before talking about more integration.

So, in my opinion it is better to concentrate our political capital on the outstanding projects that we have initiated, before beginning new ones. For instance, we have to implement the bail-in legislation in a consistent manner in all Member States and all Member States already have to implement correctly the Deposit Guarantee Scheme Directive.

Moreover, we have to rethink our current economic governance framework. Implementation of the deficit rules is still not satisfactory and many recommendations in the European Semester are never implemented by Member States. I hope that in the coming years we will do all this and leap forward in our euro integration, but before we think about eurobonds or an economic treasury, a European treasury, we have to ensure that this is properly done.

Finally, I think that the best way to achieve economic convergence in the eurozone is not through massive fiscal transfer between Member States, but by sharing and extending economic and financial best practices among us.