Current proposals for an EU budget for 2011 lack direct investment proposals that will lead to the creation of jobs, Portuguese GUE/NGL MEP Miguel Portas said in today's EP budget debate.

"This mediocre underfunded budget proposal is too timid. We need a tax on financial transactions to fund the barest minimum of fairness in the economy. Europeans are getting desperate and the evidence is for all to see as people take to the streets."

"Across Europe, budgets are being subjected to one word and one word only: Austerity. Such swingeing cuts are being combined with increases in VAT, the most unfair of all taxes" Portas concluded.

Arguing that the instruments for solidarity, for reducing inequalities, for economic and social cohesion, employment and social progress are absent from this budget, João Ferreira (Portugal) said this proposal was an instrument for neoliberal inequality, job insecurity, structural unemployment, military interventionism and war. "This is an affront to the interests of workers and people!" he said, outlining a scheme for the creation of a European Programme for Employment and Sustainable Development. "Such a programme would cost 1% of EU GDP, complemented by additional capital from member states. This programme would aim at real convergence, the sustainable use of resources, investment in production and the creation of good quality jobs".

Kyriacos Triantaphyllides (Cyprus) said the EU budget, because of the Multiannual Financial Framework, was not the flexible tool it should be. He also said that the current budget was "possessed by the following absurdity: in the middle of such an enormous economic crisis that is hitting families, workers, small businesses and the young, all Commission and Council proposals are focused on the interests of large private sector companies."