38 Amendments of Sari ESSAYAH related to 2013/2158(INI)
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the recession in the eurozone came to an end, numerically speaking, in the second quarter of 2013, but whereas annual growth in the eurozone will remain negative this year and unemployment and inequality areis at a record high in eurozone history; whereas growth needs to be further enhanced for this to be considered a long-lived recovery, and in order to generate the necessary momentum to relieve the EU of its socioeconomic challenges;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas unemployment in the EU has reached the alarming figure of 26.6 million12 whereas long-term unemployment has risen in most Member States and reached an all-time high in the EU as a whole; whereas the decline in employment has been more pronounced in those countries which awere in such bad situation that they had to undertakinge more substantial fiscal consolidation;
Amendment 13 #
D. whereas this has been the deepest and more long lasting recession in the economic history of the last 100 years, but a catastrophy has been avoided, and the effects of the crisis distributed to many years, even decades, and these effects include that long-term unemployment is still on the rise, possibly resulting in structural unemployment; whereas labour market segmentation has continued to increase, average household incomes are declining in many Member States and indicators point to a trend of somewhat higher levels and deeper forms of poverty and social exclusion, including in-work poverty for some years ahead;
Amendment 17 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the effects of the crisis and of the excessive fiscal consolidation policies pursued in recent years have resulted in an unprecedented and growing divergence in output and employment between core and periphery countries; whereas the core- periphery gap in unemployment rates reached 10 percentage points in 2012, compared with only 3.5 percentage points in 2000; whereas that divergence is forecast to peak this year;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas systematic errors in the Commission’s economic forecasts for growth and unemployment in recent years demonstrate the need for a change of diagnosis and strategy with a view to ending the crisis; whereas the pace of fiscal consolidation has slowed, yet the deflationary impact of certain necessary structural reforms, mostly focusing on external demand, are still having the same severe effects on internal demand, with stagnant investment and growth and weak job creation;
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas certain macroeconomic imbalances, for instance in the area of external competitiveness, have improved, although internal imbalances between Member States have been exacerbated; whereas evidence shows that a one-size- fits-all policy that relies on external demand and squeezes internal demand is not possible for all eurozone members at the same time; whereas this is heightening the (underestimated) negative impact of simultaneous austerity programmes, thereby depressing internal demand and resulting in over-reliance on demand from third economies, at a time when there are signs of a weakening outlook for emerging economies;
Amendment 39 #
I. whereas the focus on speed and intensity in pursuing structural reforms has been asymmetricaldifferent among Member States depending on their situation, being much more demanding for periphery countries than for core countries, a situation which is liable to exacerbate imbalances in growth creation in the EUin countries with biggest problems, but all Member States have had to adjust their public finances;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J
Recital J
J. whereas the greatesall Member States need to improve their performance and competitiveness and a great challenge facing the eurozone at the moment is the growing socioeconomic divergences between Member States; whereas the severe unemployment and social problems currently faced may spill over to other Member States through internal trade, with the erosion of human capital resulting in a deterioration in long- term international competitiveness, a situation that may lead to a deterioration in the economic fundamentals of the EU as a whole; whereas it is in the interest of all Member States to ensure that employment and social challenges are addressed in a timely and effective manner;
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital O
Recital O
O. whereas since 2010 there has been a growing divergence in the capacity of national fiscal stabilisers to counteract the economic crisis and its employment and social consequences, with this capacity having practically disappeared in those countries hit hardest by the crisis; whereas household incomes, and thus domestic demand, have consequently been less well protected than before, further aggravating the recession; whereas Parliament’s Committee on Employment and Social Affairs held a public hearing on 9 July 2013 on ‘The social dimension of the EMU – European unemployment benefit scheme’, which identified the need for automatic stabilisers at the eurozone level;
Amendment 54 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital P
Recital P
P. whereas poverty levels have been increasing at alarming rates since 2007, such that 24.2 % of the EU population is currently at risk of poverty or social exclusion; whereas social protection expenditure has decreased in nearly all the Member States, and whereas the Social Protection Committee (SPC) is warning that increasing numbers of people are at risk of income poverty, child poverty, severe material deprivation and social exclusion because of the impact of fiscal consolidation measures;
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital Q
Recital Q
Q. whereas, despite the urgency of the situation, the EU is failing to achieve almost all of the Europe 2020 targets, and whereas progress in the Member States in delivering on the Europe 2020 objectives has been disappointing; whereas the commitments made in the 2013 national reform programmes are insufficient to meet most of the EU-level targets;
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Welcomes the fact that this year, for the first time, the draft Joint Employment Report annexed to the Annual Growth Survey (AGS) includes a scoreboard for employment and social policies, which will help to strengthen the monitoring of employment and social developments as part of macroeconomic surveillance within the European Semester; considers that this represents an acknowledgment of the need to reinforce the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union, which is not only desirable, but also necessary in order to address the crisis and prevent serious socioeconomic divergences in the eurozone, thereby enhancing its sustainability;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Considers it regrettable, however,understandable that these indicators have not been made binding, unlike the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure scoreboard; asks the Commission to remedy this situation, which does not reflect the need to put macroeconomic and social aspects on an equal footing as part of the European Semester process; considers this situation particularly worrying in the light of the growing social and employment imbalances in the EU;
Amendment 72 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Considers it regrettable that the employment and social indicators proposed by the Commission are insufficient to cover the Member States’ employment and social situations comprehensively; calls for the scoreboard to include additional indicators, in particular child poverty levels, a decent work index and a European living wage index, in order to allow proper assessment of the social situation in the EUMember States;
Amendment 77 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls on the Commission to use the social scoreboard not only as an analytical tool, but also as a basis for developing concrete indications for the Member States as to how they can fight or prevent unemployment, reduce social inequality, promote active inclusion and prevent social dumping, which would then feed into the design and implementation of the 2014 country-specific recommendations (CSRs) within the European Semester process, underlines that these policies remain totally in the competence of the Member States;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
Amendment 84 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. WarnNotes that until now the new Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure has been invoked mainly to urge countries to improve their competitiveness, thereby contributing to deflationary pressures in southern Europe, without requiring the same emphasis on creating inflationary pressures, vianotes also the wage increases, in those countries with the necessary room for manoeuvre to do so; warns that using the same tools to seek growth via the external sector for all eurozone countries reduces the expected net results by growing external demand at the expense of internal demand;
Amendment 91 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Points out that, while structural reforms may bear fruit in the medium to long term, the need to stimulate the EU’s internal demand requires the Commission and the Council to put in place, as a matter of urgency, an ambitious, coordinatedenhance investment plan in order to sustain growth and quality jobs in the short term and enhance potential in the medium term; notes that the main objectives have already been defined in the Europe 2020 strategy and in the Compact for Growth and Jobs agreed in June 2012, but that financing must be stepped up;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Welcomes the fact that in the AGS 2014 the Commission calls on the Member States to protect or promote longer-term investment in education, research and innovation, energy and climate action; considers this insufficient, however, to allow Member States with already- constrained budgets to accomplish that goal; calls on the Commission to explore and promote the necessary reforms to exclude productive investments, for instance in education, and research and development, from the deficit targets established under EU rules so as to ring- fence them, given their potential to generate growth and jobs;
Amendment 100 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Calls for stronger support from the European Investment Bank and for the release of EU funds to support urgent investment plans; notes that project bonds malready provide a mechanism for supporting investment, but regards the eurozone’s weak growth and job creation rate as evidence that it should be more ambitious with a view to developing the necessary public and coordinated investments;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Considers that cohesion policy is essential in helping to reduce internal competitive disparities and structural imbalances; calls on the Commission, as a matter of urgency, to reprogramme unspent structural funding in favour of youth employment programmes and SMEs; calls on the Commission to find special solutions for those countries with very high unemployment rates which will be forced to return EU funds on account of co-financing problems; asks the Commission, to this end, to explore the possibility of excluding Member States’ participation in the co-financing of EU funds or programmes (under heading 1 (‘Sustainable growth’) of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)) from the calculation of their structural deficit as defined in the two-pack;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Is concerned that the Commission’s strategy of restoring EU competitiveness through an excessive adjustment of unit labour costs via salary reductions has sharply eroded the purchasing power of many EU workers, lowered household incomes and depressed internal demand, further fuelling unemployment and social exclusion, particularly in those countries hit hardest by the crisis; pPoints out that a transversal policy for restoring competitiveness must also contemplate strategies focusing on otherall production costs, salaries, cost of energy and raw materials, price developments and profit margins;
Amendment 116 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Welcomes the Commission’s recommendations to core countries with the necessary room for manoeuvre to pursue expansionary policies via wage increases; calls on the Commission to make ambitious recommendations which will help to lower the excessive deflationary pressures on southern Europe and to avoid the risk of exacerbating imbalances in growth and job creation in the eurozone;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Notes that the Commission, in its 2014 draft Joint Employment Report 2014, points out that unit labour cost reductions and wage moderation have fed into price developments only slowly and incompletely, in part because of simultaneous hikes in indirect taxes and administered prices owing to fiscal consolidation;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Notes that decent wages are important not only for social cohesion and fairness in society, but also for maintaining a strong economy; calls on the Commission to propose measures that tackle inequality and guarantee decent pay; calls on the Member States to combat in-work poverty by pursuing labour market policies aimed at ensuring a living wage for those in work;
Amendment 127 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Calls on the CommissionMember States to explore the possibility of reducing pressure on wages through minimum-wage schemes, which can be different in each country so as to reflect median wage ratios and differing levels of productivity; points out that such a measure may make it possible to reduce deflation risks and inequality and to limit nominal imbalances in competitiveness and current accounts;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Stresses that excessive fiscal consolidation has led to an excessive focus on public debt deleveraging, which has hampered private-sector debt reduction; nNotes that, while the AGS emphasises the risks of high public debt, the IMF has already warned that the main drag on European growth and job creation is in fact private debt (household and corporate);
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Stresses that a sustainable exit from the crisis requires effective measures to address the debt overhang, the domestic liquidity shortage and the investment slump; recalls that private debt sustainability is a precondition for investment, growth and job creation; calls on the Commission to introduce measures allowing orderly debt restructuring, particularly for households and SMEs;
Amendment 137 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Warns that SMEs face the highest credit costs and an ever-growing contraction of credit availability; stresses that this is not only hampering growth and job creation in the EU, given SMEs’ considerable potential to create new jobs, but is also exacerbating imbalances in the eurozone, since there has been a worrying accentuation of differences in the cost of bank lending between core and periphery countriMember States; welcomes the fact that the importance of access to finance for SMEs has been recognised, and urges the Member States to make access to finance for SMEs an absolute priority in their national growth plans; urges the Member States to provide easy access to the EU funds earmarked for that purpose;
Amendment 153 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 35
Paragraph 35
35. Calls on the CommissionMember States to design tailor-made policies to support job creation for the long-term unemployed, senior unemployed people, women and other priority groups hit especially hard by the crisis, such as immigrants and people with disabilities;
Amendment 166 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 39
Paragraph 39
39. Calls on the Commission and the Council to ensure that Member States subject to the excessive deficit procedure also have the fiscal space to make use of these measures, in particular by temporarily exempting Member States’ co-financing of measures to combat youth unemployment from the calculation of excessive deficits;
Amendment 184 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 47
Paragraph 47
47. Supports the Commission’s call to shift the tax burden away from labour and suggests shifting it towards other forms of sustainable tax such as a harmonised corporate tax, the financial transaction tax (FTT) and carbon taxes;
Amendment 208 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 56
Paragraph 56
56. Notes that social protection and social policy, in particular unemployment benefits, minimum income support and progressive taxation, initially helped to reduce the depth of the recession and stabilised labour markets and consumption; stresses, however, that the capacity of these crucial economic and social stabilisers has been reduced to its absolute minimum owing to austerity measures in those Member States in which such stabilisers are most needed; notes that household incomes and domestic demand have consequently been less well protected, which has aggravated the recession in the countries concerned;
Amendment 213 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 57
Paragraph 57
57. Stresses that social policies and social standards have been widely used as adjustment factors by those EMU members experiencing negative economic shocks; notes that such internal devaluations have had drasticunwanted social consequences for national welfare states and their citizens, resulting in a social emergency in many Member States;
Amendment 215 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 58
Paragraph 58
Amendment 217 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 59
Paragraph 59
Amendment 225 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 60
Paragraph 60
Amendment 232 #
Motion for a resolution
Annex to the motion for resolution
Annex to the motion for resolution