Wersja polska
Divided Europe will not be competitive and will not provide sustainable jobs, February 16, 2011
Strasbourg
Plenary debate on the Europe 2020 Strategy (with resolution)
Intervention by Danuta Hübner MEP
Strasbourg, Wednesday 16 February 2011
My reading of the reality of today and tomorrow is that European jobs will be sustainable only if underpinned by competitiveness. It is not a secret that competitiveness is not a particularly strong feature of the European economy; neither of individual member states, nor of the eurozone or the EU as a whole.
We need an institutionalised commitment to do it. We need an institutionalised competitiveness process, we need to identify competitiveness factors and tailor them to specific situations. We already have several instruments, indeed a substantial part of the institutional framework, that, with a little bit of political will, allow for a European Commission-led competitiveness process based on the Community method. Instruments which are already in place, or will be in place soon, such as the European semester with the annual growth review and the macroeconomic imbalances procedure, must be actively used as mechanisms working for competitiveness.
The scoreboard on macroeconomic imbalances must include structural competitiveness-related indicators. EU 2020, boosting competitiveness, should be vigorously implemented through all available policy tools now, and not after 2013.
For a competitive European economy, we need all hands on board. It is important that the same rules are applied to eurozone and non-eurozone Member States. Decoupling core Europe from the rest of the Union would lead to a divided Europe. Divided Europe will not be a competitive Europe, able to generate sustainable jobs. A divided Europe is in nobody's interest. A competitive Europe can create sustainable jobs that will not be lost tomorrow to increasingly competitive emerging economies.
Temporary Committee; completed its work 31.07.2011
Temporary Committee; completed its work 31.07.2011
Professor Danuta Huebner presented the report on the
achievements of EU regional policy in the years 2004-2009.
