THE EURO will be put at risk unless a “sustainable” economic recovery plan is followed, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso said in Strasbourg yesterday.
However, he also warned members of the European Parliament that a “one size fits all” approach was not suitable for every European Union member state. “We have to accept that we have 27 national budgets, we have 27 finance ministers, we have 27 national banks apart from our European Central Bank,” he said.
“And it is very important to reinforce the euro and to have economic policies and financial policies that are sustainable. If not, we will put the euro, one of the great successes of European integration, at risk.”
Mr Barroso was responding to criticism of the EU’s response to the economic downturn from the Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt, who leads the Liberal group in the parliament and is a former prime minister.
“We are not the United States of America. We are not an integrated nation state, so of course we have different situations,” Mr Barroso said. “You cannot ask Germany and Latvia to do the same thing. We have countries in Europe that are under balance of payment support, so of course we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Earlier, Mr Barroso had told the parliament that the post-crisis economy “cannot and will not” be the same as the pre-crisis economy. He said new sources of growth had to be created because monetary and fiscal stimulus could not be relied on “for ever”.
Mr Barroso said responsibility for labour market policy rested with member states, but existing European instruments should be used to help keep people in employment and train them for future jobs.
“That is why the European Commission is about to make a proposal to simplify structural fund procedures and waive the need for national co-financing from the European Social Fund for 2009 and 2010,” he said. “We need to rebuild our economic model and put the values back at the heart of our social market economy.”
