The European Parliament today debated in Strasbourg the creation of a Capital Markets Union and the financing of investments and reforms to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness. The debate was based on the report by Mario Draghi, which acknowledges that Europe faces a massive need for investment. Speaking in the debate, the ESN rejected Draghi’s call for more debt and centralisation, and called instead for sovereignty and the protection of Europe’s peoples.
Commenting on the debate, Marcin Sypniewski, Member of the ESN Group, declared:
“The European Union spends billions of euros on investments every year. Year after year, substantial funds flow through various programmes, and because this money is not enough, the EU also takes on debt. These debts are already being repaid today – and our children and grandchildren will be paying them off for decades to come. This is a permanent burden.
For years, centralisation has been proposed as the way forward. More and more decisions are taken in Brussels rather than in the individual member states. The result is plain to see: even Mario Draghi’s report acknowledges that Europe is not competitive, that it lacks innovation, and that it needs massive investments to catch up with the rest of the world. These centralising decisions have stifled Europe – yet no lessons have been learned.
Instead, you propose the same again: this time to spend even more money, and this time it will supposedly end differently. But it will not. A bureaucrat in Brussels will never make better decisions than entrepreneurs and citizens themselves. People know best how to invest, how to save, how to run their affairs – far better than any official in Brussels.
We must finally learn from past mistakes. Europe does not need further centralisation projects or new reports. What we need is real deregulation. Member states must be free to build their own capital markets without interference from Brussels. Today, the EU is in fact driving capital out of Europe. We are producing nothing here and will soon have to import everything. This is what must be addressed – not yet another push for harmonisation.”
