In SME-News von Peter Jungen Mittwoch, 07. April 2010, 12:28 Uhr
Peter Jungen, the President of the SME-Union, remarked today that the present debate on the Greek foreign debt situation is misleading and besides the real point.
Competitiveness is the real issue for Europe. It is surprising to see how many European politicians are forgetting that the Lisbon Agenda was focused on increasing competitiveness of the European economy. Unfortunately ten years down the road none of the Lisbon Agenda objectives were achieved. Instead of discussing the causes for this failure the EU Commission has produced a new paper “EU 2020” with basically the same objectives of the Lisbon Agenda. Whereas it is the declared objective of the Commission to increase European competitiveness, at the same time proposals are made to reduce the competitiveness of some member countries in order to make live easier inside the EU. What we need in Europe is more competitiveness, is more entrepreneurship, is more innovation, is more competition and not less of these. In other words, Europe has to embark on a more pro-market entrepreneurial culture or Europe will continue to loose global strength. With this in mind, Peter Jungen cautioned the EU Counsil, meeting on Thursday to make any decision which would be understood that Europe in reality is decreasing it’s competitiveness and economic strength. We support President Barroso’s statement: “I want Europe to emerge stronger from the economic and financial crisis”, which is a call for increasing competitiveness in Europe not only in a few countries but in all member countries. “ With reference to the present discussion on bailing out Greece and on the European Monetary Union, Peter Jungen made it clear, that the European Monetary Union will not be in place for the Greek crisis. The European Monetary Union will have to concentrate on prevention whereas the IMF is basically concentrating on bailouts. If Europe will not establish strict rules to prevent future crises there will be not a future for the European Monetary Union. All Monetary Unions in history have collapsed. If the Euro-Zone is decisive about avoiding the same future it has to embark on deep soul searching measures which makes a European Monetary Fund unavoidable. A union is not about bailouts, a union is primarily about joint responsibility and about subsidiarity where everyone has to do whatever is possible before the other members are getting involved.