EU summit 'must address growth'

Next month’s EU summit must address growth and employment as well as austerity measures initiated by the European Commission, ECB and IMF troika, a debate in the European Parliament has heard.

MEPs have also told the European Commission that eurobonds would be a source of stability for the euro zone, and they said member states should offer tax incentives to create jobs for young people.

"The March summit will not be business as usual", Danish minister for European affairs Nicolai Wammen said in a contribution to the debate in Strasbourg. He said reform should create "competitiveness, employment and a greener economy".

Representing the European Commission, Maroš Šefčovič warned that “growth is at a standstill".

He paid special attention to youth unemployment and said the Commission would visit the eight most affected countries to see how to make better use of EU funds.

EPP group chairman Joseph Daul said confidence was the foundation of both financial markets and the EU itself. Referring to the upcoming summit to be held on March 1st and 2nd, he said tax on businesses should be relaxed in return for commitments to recruit more young people.

While many MEPS were critical of the level of austerity faced by Greece, Mr Šefčovič said "the Commission is Greece's best ally" and added "we want Greece to remain a member of the euro area".

But the socialist S&D group president Hannes Swoboda said the troika was aggravating the situation in Greece... and leaving no room for social dialogue he warned that cuts in the minimum wage will mean more recession and more poverty.

However liberal group ALDE said "the Greek government promised much but delivered little". Alexander Graf Lambsdorff called for reforms to the tax system and for ports and the energy sector to be privatised because "the Greek state is just too big".

But Greens/EFA Co-President Daniel Cohn-Bendit rejected the suggestion that Greece had been inactive, given the previous waves of austerity measures. He compared the Troika to a "neoliberal Taliban" and said it had insisted on cuts to pensions instead of to the defence budget, as proposed by the Greek government. The Commission's 2020 economic strategy was beginning to look like "a fairytale" he added.

"EU summits are becoming a political ritual", said ECR president Martin Callanan. He said he believed austerity alone was failing to win confidence of economists or markets. He said nobody believed the measures in Greece would work, even the members of parliament who had voted for them last Sunday.

He argued that economic reform in the long term is essential but that in the short term only a default and devaluation would salvage something from the Greek economy.