The PES acknowledges the outcome of the eurozone Head of States or Governments’ summit yesterday but warns that it will not be sufficient.

The long awaited Summit endorsed technical proposals initially tabled by the PES in March 2010 to make eurozone defence mechanisms fairer and more efficient. However the agreement contains precious little in terms of provisions for boosting growth and job creation, a central element of the PES strategy for European economic recovery.

The PES has been a long time advocate of measures such as extending the maturities and lowering the interest rates of loans to distressed member states, of allowing the EFSF to intervene on the secondary market, of the use of a joint eurozone guarantee to back individual member states’ borrowing and of Eurobonds.

These PES proposals were repeatedly rejected by the Conservative majority in charge of the European Council for over a year. Had these measures been implemented 16 months ago, when they where first tabled by the PES, it is likely that the crisis in Greece would have been of a far smaller magnitude, and that speculation would have never spread to Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain. The PES leaders’ phone-conference organized last Saturday was instrumental in securing the deal.

But the compromise still lacks a necessary long term framework for jobs and growth. The PES demands the immediate implementation of a European coordinated investment strategy, without which the eurozone summit’s call to “enhance our growth” will remain wishful thinking. Furthermore, this crisis is also a failure of European governance. Yet nothing indicates that the current conservative majority in EU institutions, including the European Council, is prepared to learn from it. A reform is needed along the line proposed by the PES.

PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen stated: “The events of the past year have shown us a key difference between the European left and the European right. We meet, take a common decision and go to work. They meet, confront their viewpoints, and then meet again.” He added: “It looks like yesterday’s meeting should do the trick for now by putting a leash on the market. But with unemployment still at a record high, European citizens desperately need decisions that will have real consequences on their lives in terms of job creation. We need a European Jobs Summit, and I would say it should be sooner rather than later.”
 

For further information please contact Brian Synnott on +32 474 98 96 75 (brian.synnott@pes.org)

The PES brings together 33 socialist, social democratic, labour and progressive parties in the European Union and Norway, a parliamentary group in the European Parliament (184 MEPs) and in the Committee of the Regions (247 members) - plus observer and associate parties and organizations from all over Europe. ECOSY and PES Women are respectively the Youth and the Women's organizations of the PES.