Faced with the disastrous consequences of their handling of the crisis, conservatives have turned to PES answers to deal with speculators. Reacting to last week’s downgrading of EU countries by US-based agencies, it was the time for German chancellor Angela Merkel to call for a European rating agency.
 

During the last year the Party of European Socialists have repeatedly demanded the creation of an independent European rating agency and PES leaders unanimously adopted a declaration calling for it in June. Establishing such an agency is a key point of the PES strategy to overcome the current crisis. A European rating agency would work as a counter-weight to the power of three main US rating agencies (and would ease the pressure on the EU economy).
 

However, conservatives have kept from criticizing rating agencies’ role in the crisis until very recently; they preferred to focus on imposing dire austerity measures on the most fragile euro-economies. They failed to see that extreme cuts could not fix the financial imbalances and that austerity-only could not prevent further downgrades from top rating agencies.
 

PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen stated ; “After Commission President José Barroso, it now was Angela Merkel’s turn to finally call for an independent European rating agency. This is yet another example of European People’s Party retrospectively adopting PES measures. Last year when we called for a decisive answer to stop speculators’ attacks on Greece, conservatives failed to act in due time. We are still recovering from their lack of leadership. Now, despite dragging their feet, they finally proved our point on the need of a European rating agency. I daresay… What is next, Mrs. Merkel?”

 

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.