European right advocates return to austerity
While the European Commission prepares the revision of the fiscal rules, there are those who want to guarantee that the essence of these rules, which pushed countries like Portugal to austerity after the crisis, is maintained. This is the case of the PPE, a group where PSD and CDS meet.
The European People's Party (PPE), the political family where the PSD and the CDS are located, is already preparing a return to austerity as a way to respond to the recession caused by the pandemic. The news was advanced last week by the Financial Times, which had access to a
document prepared by the PPE deputies(link is external) in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
In the document that the Financial Times had access to, and which appears shortly before the Commission presents the already announced revision of the budget rules included in the Stability and Growth Pact, the deputies of the center-right party defend that the current limits for the debt (60% of GDP) and budget deficit (3%) of EU Member States are to be maintained. The revision of these limits has been suggested by several economists due to the fact that they do not have “any scientific basis”, as he
explained.(link is external)Paul de Grawe at the recent Recovery Summit organized by the EU European Presidency. For PPE MEPs, however, there is no reason to change them.
The group that integrates the PSD and CDS regrets that the fiscal rules have not been applied impartially in the past and therefore defends that their application be handed over to a body with “complete political independence”. This “independent arbitrator” would have the role of supervising compliance with the rules of the PEC without being subject to any kind of democratic scrutiny.
Finally, the PPE deputies defend a reinforcement of the macroeconomic conditionality associated with the Community Budget. In other words, MEPs want Member States' access to European funds to be dependent on the implementation of structural reforms defined by Brussels. It is enough to recall the structural reforms demanded in recent years by the Commission – deregulation of the labor market, cuts in expenditure on public sector salaries and reductions in public expenditure on Health – to understand the meaning of this proposal.
Speaking to Esquerda.Net, the Blocist MEP José Gusmão, who is also a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, said that “the position of the European right, the PSD and CDS shows that they not only learned nothing, but only they await a new opportunity to throw themselves into wages and pensions, labor rights, the national health service and public school.” José Gusmão recalls that “the fact that they do not have social support for this agenda leads them to the point of proposing a crime against democracy: the creation of an "independent" entity that imposes its program on democratic governments. They are presented, for those who didn't know.”
The proposal to revise the fiscal rules must be presented by the European Commission in the coming months. For now, the PPE deputies leave the first warning: the European centre-right is not willing to give up the rules that forced countries like Portugal to adopt austerity programs that proved to be a failure.
www.reuters.com
They are going to need a bigger phonebox
