Debating recent Summit conclusions with Commission President Barroso, GUE/NGL President Lothar Bisky said there was an urgent need to rein in the neoliberal fixation on profit and competition with effective regulation of financial markets.

"We need legitimate, democratically controlled economic governance with strict measures to tackle tax, wage and environmental dumping with corresponding common minimum standards" said the German MEP, criticising neoliberalism's obsessive, destructive push for "flexicurity" and increased retirement ages.

Irish MEP Bairbre de Brún said "the measures agreed at the summit will lock all EU member states into an economic logic which is against the interests of the people - a logic which necessitates cuts and removes the ability of member states to promote growth." De Brún asked: "what thinking leads the Council and Commission to believe that the policies imposed on Ireland will not increase the debt? Or that this will not be the result of rolling out these policies across the EU?"

New MEP for Dublin, Paul Murphy, challenged the economic governance package, saying it meant "working people will pay for the crisis as they are being forced to support the European banks and speculators by paying for their losses." Murphy demanded a referendum on the "European shock doctrine" of proposed Treaty changes which, he said would "copper-fasten EU austerity".

Ilda Figueiredo from Portugal said the Summit conclusions offered nothing to the 100 million people in poverty in the EU. "Millions live in poverty, working for low wages and in poor working conditions while the profits of economic and financial institutions soar outrageously" she said. "Yet again, the only concern of the Council was to protect the interests of economic and financial organisations, with greater centralization of political power to facilitate greater concentration and accumulation of economic power."

GUE/NGL Press Contact:
David Lundy 0032485505812
david.lundy@europarl.europa.eu
European United Left / Nordic Green Left
European Parliamentary Group
www.guengl.eu