The President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, has urged the Government to use Ireland's EU Presidency to turn the EU away from analysing its need for economic reform and towards concrete action. From Denis Staunton in Davos
Speaking in Davos, where he is attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Mr Cox said the Lisbon Process, as the EU's reform plan is known, had already produced too many words.
"We are overloaded with information. We don't need more analysis. We are even overloaded with mountains of council conclusions. I would say less conclusions and more focus on outcomes that people are prepared politically to deliver.
"If Ireland could take out an eraser and rub out a large number of these excessive conclusions which are interesting but lack genuine, tangible political commitment and put down a number of target outcomes we should work for together, I think Ireland would be doing Europe a favour and through that doing ourselves a favour," he said.
Mr Cox identified investment in research and technology as one area where governments must work with private enterprise to reach targets that could help the EU to compete with the US. He said that too many European science graduates were emigrating and that European governments must take action to reverse the trend.
"As regards higher education, there is something of a brain drain out of Europe towards the USA. If we want to be players, what are we going to do about it?" he said.
Mr Cox praised reform programmes in Germany, France and Italy but said that Europe as a whole must address the problem of its ageing population. He called for a plan of action to encourage older workers to remain in the workforce.
"Does it make sense in an ageing society to add on top of the demographic demands people taking earlier than necessary retirement because of the incentive and disincentive systems. That requires very specific targets and that's where I welcome the fact that the Germans in particular, who are 24 per cent of the weight of the euro zone, have decided finally to bite the reformist bullet and to put down some real markers," he said.
Mr Cox said that, if a vote had been taken in the European Parliament, most MEPs would have supported the European Commission's decision to challenge finance ministers over the breaches of the Stability and Growth Pact.
"To do with clarifying the particular rules of procedure, I've no particular problem with that. But I also recognise that the operation of the Stability and Growth Pact, to do with actual real economy and real circumstances, requires the exercise of judgment by policy-makers and, as someone who strongly believes in the primacy of politics where we can have it in European affairs, that cannot be clarified by judges and so we shouldn't confuse clarifying procedure with who gets to call a judgment and why. My own view is that the Stability and Growth Pact is under great stress but a stability culture for Europe is indispensable and that in respect of the current operation, we've had such a prolonged period of poor growth or in some cases recession, it has not been the ideal policy test-bed for what is a good idea but in pretty bad times," he said.
