28 Amendments of Derk Jan EPPINK related to 2013/2277(INI)
Amendment 44 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas, within the Troika, the Commission is responsible for negotiating the conditions for financial assistance for euro area Member States ‘in liaison with the ECB’ and ’wherever possible together with the IMF’, the financial assistance hereinafter referred to as ‘EU-IMF assistance’; whereas each member of the Troika had to act within its own mandate and follow its own independent process;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas the Troika is the basic structure for negotiation between the official lenders and the governments of the recipient countries, as well as for reviewing the implementation of economic adjustment programmes; whereas for the European side, the final decisions as regards financial assistance and conditionality are taken by the Eurogroup;
Amendment 56 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas the Troika arrangement was a pragmatic approach to deal with unprecedented problems; whereas the Troika members pursued shared objectives in promoting economic and financial stability in Europe and in the euro area in particular;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D a (new)
Recital D a (new)
Da. whereas a legal basis and special instruments for the Troika have been progressively created;
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas the members of the Troika took it for granted that no programme country wanted to leave the euro zone;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the EU created several ad hoc mechanisms to provide financial assistance for euro area countries, first through bilateral loans, including from several non- euro area countries, then through the EFSF and EFSM, and finally through the an emergency fund of temporary character for EU Member States in distress, consisting of a 'Special Purpose Vehicle', the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and a Union instrument, the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM), and finally through the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which was meant to replace all the other mechanisms;
Amendment 77 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is an agreement between the Member State concerned and the Troika, which results from negotiations and whereby a Member State undertakes to carry out a number of actionapply an economic adjustment programme consisting of a number of measures and reforms in exchange for financial assistance; whereas it is stipulated in the ESM Treaty that a Member State requesting assistance from the ESM has also to address a request for assistance to the IMF;
Amendment 89 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas the total amount of financial assistance packages in the four programmes is unprecedented, as are the duration and shape of the programmes, leading to an unusualdesirable situation where the assistance has almost exclusively replaced the usual financing provided by the markets;
Amendment 100 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas the economic situation and recent developments in some Member States have compromised the quality of employment, social protection and health and safety standards; whereas unemployment in these Member States has risen much more than anticipated and economic and social hardship is unmistakable;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital J a (new)
Recital J a (new)
Ja. whereas the crisis revealed considerable democratic deficits in economic and financial policies, areas of European policy of particular significance for the citizens; whereas some Member States now see themselves subject to policies which their parliaments would never have decided on their own, while other Member States see themselves forced to grant sizeable loans or guarantees in order to avoid a breakup of the euro; whereas, because of the spill over effects of national economic and fiscal policy decisions on the economies of other Euro area Member States, their national parliaments are thus effectively deprived of their budgetary autonomy;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas, in its resolution of 20 November 2012, Parliament calls for high standards of democratic accountability at national and Union level to be applied to the Troika; whereas such accountability notably requires a closer involvement of national parliaments and the possibility of the Commission and the ECB in their capacity as members of the Troika to be heard in the European Parliament before taking up itstheir duties and to be subject to regular reporting to and democratic scrutiny by the European Parliament;
Amendment 145 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital L
Recital L
L. whereas the Troika arrangement was a pragmatic approach to deal with unprecedented problems; whereas the programmes were in the short run primarily meant to avoid a disorderly default and stop speculation on sovereign debt; whereas the medium term aim was to ensure that the money that was lent would be reimbursed, thus avoiding a large financial loss that would rest on the shoulders of the taxpayers of the countries which are providing the assistance and guaranteeing the funds; whereas this also requires the programme to deliver sustainable growth and effective debt reduction in the medium and long term; whereas the programmes were not suited to comprehensively correcting macroeconomic imbalances which had accumulated sometimes over decades;
Amendment 190 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Notes that, prior to the beginning of the EU-IMF assistance programme initiated in the spring of 2010, there was a dual fear associated with the ‘insolvency’ and ’non- sustainability’ of the public finances of Greece as a result of the constantly declining competitiveness of the Greek economy and decades of imprudent fiscal policy, with the government deficit reaching 15.7% of GDP in 2009, and the debt-to-GDP ratio continuing on an upward trend since 2003 when it stood at 97.4%, reaching 129.7% in 2009 and 156.9% in 2012;
Amendment 270 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Deplores the unpreparedness of the EU and international institutions, including the IMF, for a sovereign debt crisis of a large magnitude inside a monetary unionsome Troika members and national governments of programme countries, for coping with the consequences of a euro crisis which is ultimately the result of a poorly designed monetary union and lack of compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact;
Amendment 291 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Acknowledges, however, that the immense challenge the Troika faced leading to the crisis was unique as a result of the poor, inter alia, insufficient structural reform by some Member States in the run-up to the crisis, the state of regulation of financial services, large macroeconomic imbalances built up over many years, and the fact that a number of instruments such as external devaluation were not available due to the constraints of monetary union; notes, moreover, that time was running out, legal obstacles had to be cleared, fear of a melt-down of the euro area was palpable, political agreements had to be reached, the world economy was in a downturn, and a number of countries which were intended to contribute financial support had seen their own public and private debt increase in alarming ways;
Amendment 339 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15 a (new)
Paragraph 15 a (new)
15a. Notes that potential alternatives to the Troika, such as a breakup of the euro area or the temporary introduction of one or various parallel currencies to the euro currency in specific Member States, were easily disregarded;
Amendment 348 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. RegretNotes that the programmes for Greece, Ireland and Portugal comprise a number of detailed prescriptions for health systems reform and expenditure cuts; regrets that the programmes are not bound by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Treaties, including Art. 168(7) TFEU;
Amendment 399 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Points to the unacceptable levels of unemployment and in particular youth unemployment in the four Member States under assistance programmes; points especially to the sharp increase in youth unemployment in Greece, Cyprus and Portugal;
Amendment 482 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Deplores however the sometimes over- optimistic assumptions and forecasts made by the Troika, especially as far as growth is concerned, but also the insufficient recognit; underlines in this respect in particular that over-optimistic growth projections have led to an unacceptably high number of revisions of political resistance to change in some Member States; deplores the fact that this also affecteddebt sustainability for some programme countries; considers with concern that poor forecasting has led to a loss of credibility of the Troika’s analysis of the interplay between fiscal consolidation and growth; notes that as a result fiscal targets could not be fulfilledd its members; deplores also the insufficient recognition of political resistance to change in some Member States; notes that these factors contributed to the non-fulfilment of fiscal targets;
Amendment 494 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Notes that from the onset the Troika published comprehensive documents on the diagnosis, the strategy to overcome theunprecedented problems, a set of policy measures elaborated together with the national government concerned, and economic forecasts, all of which awere updated on a regular basis;
Amendment 508 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 24
Paragraph 24
24. Regrets that the reduction of structural deficits in all programme countries since the start of their respective assistance programmes has so far not yet led to a reduction in the ratios of public debt to GDP; underlinnotes that the ratio of public debt to GDP has instead sharply increased in all programme countries; acknowledges that it typically takes several years before structural reforms can make a significant contribution to raising output;
Amendment 524 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. ConsiderAcknowledges that fiscal multipliers are difficult to assess with certaintyand that research on the subject is inconclusive; recalls in this respect that the IMF admitted to underestimating the fiscal multiplier in its growth forecasts prior to October 2012 but that the Commission stated in November 2012 that forecast errors were not due to the underestimation of fiscal multipliers; points out that this expression of public disagreement between the Commission and the IMF was not followed up; considers that fiscal multipliers depend, inter alia, on the degree of public indebtedness, i.e. fiscal stimulus is less effective in highly indebted Member States;
Amendment 565 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28
Paragraph 28
28. Stresses that national-level ownership is important, and that failure to implement agreed measures has consequences in terms of the expected results; highlights in this regard that the approval by national parliaments of the budgets and laws to implement economic adjustment programmes is crucial to provide national level accountability and transparency;
Amendment 569 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 28 a (new)
Paragraph 28 a (new)
28a. Points to the possibility that positive results of reforms pursued by programme countries in the context of economic adjustment programmes inspire other EU Member States to promote the sustainability of their public finances by consolidating their budgets and foster their competitiveness through structural reforms.
Amendment 722 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 38
Paragraph 38
Amendment 778 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 39
Paragraph 39
39. Stresses that the ESM should evolve towards Community-method management as provided for in the ESM Treaty and demands that the ESM be made accountable to the European Pnational parliaments including with respect to decisions to grant financial assistance, in order to exert adequate democratic accountability over the ESM whose nature is intergovernmental;
Amendment 787 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 40
Paragraph 40
Amendment 804 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 41
Paragraph 41
41. Calls for the involvement of social partnernational parliaments in the design and implementation of adjustment programmes, current and future;