20 Amendments of Alfred SANT related to 2018/2119(INI)
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas economic growth remains vulnerable to continued geopolitical tensions, which have an impact on global trade, widespread political and social disaffections with policies considered to be unfair or unintelligible, and persisting uncertainties surrounding the Union’s future relations with the UK;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas the economic recovery is uneven across the EU; whereas there are still significant imbalances within the euro area and the EU as a whole, with the EU objective to close the economic and social gap between Northern and Southern countries far to be reached;
Amendment 46 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas the persistent low level of public investment in the EU, and in particular investment by local and regional authorities, which in 2017 remained lower than its 2007 level expressed as a share of GDP;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D a (new)
Recital D a (new)
Da. whereas unemployment rates in some Member States are still too high, particularly among young people;
Amendment 87 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Urges Member States to prepare for these demographic developments by: 1) building fiscal buffers to arm against rising fiscal costs; 2) implementing structural reforms to reduce these costs; and 3) enhancing productivity growth, which is essential to ensuring sustainable economic growth in the future; 4) developing a coherent European policy on migration; and 5) taking full account of how digitalisation and artificial intelligence will be supplementing manpower in the creation of value added that contributes to fiscal receipts;
Amendment 92 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Welcomes the Commission’s Annual Growth Survey 2019, which reaffirms the importance of: 1) high quality investments; 2) reforms that increase productivity growth, inclusiveness and institutional quality; and 3) macro-financial stability and sound public finances; shares the Commission’s view that persistent vulnerabilities include low productivity growth; persisting income inequality and slow reduction in poverty; territorial disparities; high public and private debt and other remaining macroeconomic imbalances, notably within the Euro area.
Amendment 115 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Notes that a higher proportion of elderly people entails higher healthcare, old-age care and pension spending; notes, moreover, that in an ageing society the proportion of working-age people is falling in relation to the proportion of elderly people, meaning that there are fewer working-age contributors per elderly person; highlights that this places a massive burden on public finances, threatening their sustainability; notes however, that the developments outlined will also be accompanied by an increase in demand for labour in the caring professions and that this, if properly managed, will create new sources of public revenue;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Stresses the importance of wage increase at European level for reducing inequalities and supporting upward convergence of living standards; believes, therefore, that this wage increase should take the following format: an increase of 5 per cent in the minimum wage of all countries that have a minimum wage, while the minimum wage system, always adapted to national circumstances, is introduced in those countries that do not have it;
Amendment 135 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
Amendment 145 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Urges Member States to build fiscal buffers for future generations; calls for improvements to the enforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), with a focus on debt reduction; calls on the European Institutions to assess whether the EU methodologies for the evaluation of the economic and social performance of EU Member States as well as the targets applied under the Stability and Growth Pact are still up-to-date, given that the overall economic and social conditions both at national and European level have changed drastically since the time when they were first drafted;
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Welcomes the European Fiscal Board’s proposal for a radical simplification of the budgetary rules to overcome the weaknesses of the current EU fiscal framework; stresses that flexibility, as built into the SGP rules, should strike a good balance between the objective of ensuring prudent fiscal policy and allowing for productive investments; notes however, that given how SGP rules are currently drafted and implemented, there is an inbuilt tendency for public investment commitments to be scraped in order to safeguard recurrent outlays, and believes that this is contributing to the depressed levels of public investment recorded in recent years in the EU;
Amendment 165 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Recalls that workforce ageing is likely to be a significant drag on European productivity growth over the next few decades; urges Member States, therefore, to implement productivity-enhancing structural reforms, while taking into account the impact that digitalisation and artificial intelligence will be having on the growth dynamics of European economies;
Amendment 170 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Stresses the importance of reviewing national public pension schemes, largely financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, in order to reduce their budgetary burden; recommends that pension systems across the European Union are made inflation proof and that they ensure that pension payments really reflect the needs of elderly families;
Amendment 194 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Underlines that digitalisation, globalisation and technological change are radically transforming our labour markets; notes that if properly managed, these developments would be beneficial and would require a deep revaluation of assumptions we are making with regard to labour productivity, shift in the age structure of the economically active population as well as pension rights;
Amendment 235 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Highlights that a transition to a new risk weight regime for banks’ sovereign exposures will help to weaken the ‘doom loop’ between banks and sovereigns; emphasizes that this cannot be carried out on a one-size-fits-all basis, and that the practices and banking models followed in the smaller economies have to be evaluated with full regard to their particularities and their performance record;
Amendment 240 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20 a (new)
Paragraph 20 a (new)
20a. Notes that in some Member States the length of stay of foreign workers in the labour market is short, with EU nationals, younger individuals, and lower- skilled foreign workers exhibiting a relatively shorter length of stay; underlines that the increasing reliance on a transient labour force poses a number of economic challenges and may limit economic assimilation and labour productivity growth; calls on the Commission and Member States to address these challenges characterising the EU labour market;
Amendment 244 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. HNotes that public investments are often the most affected by fiscal consolidation policies despite such investments having a direct impact on local economies and on the daily lives of citizens; highlights that to ensure intergenerational fairness, Member States must increase productivity through productive investments, such as in growth- enhancing infrastructure projects, in order to stimulate much-needed potential economic growth;
Amendment 268 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 a (new)
Paragraph 22 a (new)
22a. Notes that the lack of administrative capacity of the public administration at local and regional level is an obstacle to the implementation of structural reforms and to the long-term investments needed to bridge the investment gap; urges Member States to remove existing obstacles which hinder private and public investment at local and regional level;
Amendment 269 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22 b (new)
Paragraph 22 b (new)
22b. Recalls the importance of a business-friendly administrative and regulatory environment to make it easier for companies to access finance and raise funds cross-border; welcomes the AGS 2019 emphasis on the need to improve the effectiveness of the public administration, which should involve all levels of government;
Amendment 273 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Stresses that increasing productivity growth requires investment in R&D, innovation, and digitalisation, as well as in the modernisation and decarbonisation of Europe’s industry, transport and energy systems with an emphasis on increasing both physical and human capital;