PROGRAMMA OF ACTIVITIES OF THE BELGIUM PRESIDENCY OF THE COUNCIL

by Altiero Spinelli

SUMMARY: The Parliament carries out the usual examination of the programm Council which is to be assumed by the Belgium Government for the period July to December 1977. In "Speeches in European Parliament, 1976-1986", Pier Virgilio Dastoli Editor. (EP, 6 July 1977)

Mr President, speaking on behalf of the Communist and Allies Group. I should like to deal first with the report by Mr Jenkins, President of the proposal-making authority of the Community, and then with the report by Mr Simonet, President of the decision-making authority.

In our opinion - and I think this is a view which others share - the fundamental issue of the Community's internal situation, the one which poses the most serious problems for our countries, is the continuing slump. The rate of inflation has been slightly brought down in all our countries, but this has been possible only at the cost of rising unemployment, which it has been impossible to restrain.

In addition, we are seeing a continuing division of labour between advanced and emerging countries, the result of which is that imports onto markets which have been traditionally ours are continually increasing. All this is happening at a time when energy continues to be costly.

In this situation it is clear that task facing all the states of the Community is to take measures against inflation, against budgetary deficits, by means of policies to spur investment in order to provide work, to transform and restructure our industries and to make sure that the economic recovery takes place equitably in all regions. These policies are, and will continue to be, national policies, and this entails a twofold danger for the Community.

Firstly, the divergences between the different national policies will tend to increase just as incompatibility will increase as tensions and difficulties in relations between the various countries come to the surface. Nationalist tendencies are coming to the fore again, and in the economic sphere this means protectionism. We did think that we should never again hear what has in fact been said by French, British and Italian politicians who recommend their countrymen to buy Italian, buy British or buy French, forgetting completely that the common market exists for exactly the opposite reason.

The second danger posed by these interventionist policies - which are in fact inevitable - is that they tend to keep in existence firms and structures as they exist at present in the hope of restoring the old system at some time in the future.

These two great dangers mean that our economies may become increasingly unhealthy, increasingly unable to cope with those very problems which they with to resolve and increasingly likely to create grave political crises in our respective countries.

It is the Community's fundamental duty in this situation to ensure that its Member States avoid these dangers; that the monetary, economic, structural and research policies conducted by the various states are convergent, compatible, increasingly integrated and capable of being translated into a strong, unified, open economic system - able, in other words, to face the rest of the world and move towards a better Europe than that which entered the crisis.

At the beginning of his presidency, Mr Jenkins pointed out, quite appropriately, that in order to fulfil this task, the Community had to proceed with two great changes: first, it had to cease to be a community whose expenditure was devoted essentially to agricultural policy - a review was and is necessary of the agricultural policy in order to reduce the fantastic waste of money used for supporting artificial prices and to give much better assistance to agriculture as a whole in order to incorporate it in the process of revitalizing our economies; and secondly, it was necessary to coordinate financial methods and create for the Community new means of utilizing instruments to influence the policy of the Member States.

Our group approved this new purpose: in this way, we shall form a community whose destiny will be not only to restore but also to transform Europe.

What has the Commission done in these six months?

While asking this question, I know very well that one cannot expect the Commission in six months to have done everything which was announced by Mr Jenkins. In particular, the Commission is not responsible for the defects of the very slow and inefficient decision-making process of the Community. It can, however, take many initiatives, as with its proposed increases in the Social Fund and the Regional Fund and the quite original proposal, formulated in general terms by Vice-President Ortoli, to create a fund of I 000 million for structural reforms. This is an important step in the right direction. However, we do not yet know what criteria will be used coordinating all the means which the Com-munity has, and will have, at its disposal.

We do not yet know what total sum of money, according to the Commission, the Community must have in order to exercise decisive influence. It is in fact clear that below a certain level it will not be possible to exercise any influence on governments' policies. Only by doing this is it possible to deal with real problems such as unemployment amongst young people and women.

In my opinion, in six months, the Commission could have informed Parliament of the criteria it intended to use for its grand financial plan.

The Council, as Mr Jenkins told us, has some objections to the Ortoli proposal. This is not surprising: the Council by its very nature is against new initiatives. It takes a long time to be convinced. Therefore, since this is a great political problem, the Commission ought, before the battle in the Council, to have a great debate in Parliament in order then to request from the Council, with our backing, a certain amount of coordination and a certain amount of financial involvement. This would give us the opportunity to tell our peoples, particularly in the run-up to the European elections: 'This is what should be done, this is what the Council is preventing us from doing!'

On the subject of advanced technologies and industries, we should have liked to know - and the question here is directed more to the Council than to the Commission, since the Commission programme is now under examination by the Council - whether for the aeronautics industry, there is any probability of taking into consideration the sole fundamental change which it is necessary to introduce and without which no European industrial policy is possible namely, the fixing of deadlines for national aids to the aeronautics industries and the substitution of European aids and support.

Turning to regional policy, we ought in my opinion not only to increase the Regional Fund but also to have a global system of incentives and disincentives covering all European regions. We should not limit ourselves to giving alms to the poorest regions. Balance, in fact, can only result from an investment policy both underdeveloped and overdeveloped regions. The Community could bring its influence to bear here.

I do not want to spend a lot of time on the vital need for regional aid to be addi tional and not substitutive, because even with a small knowledge of mathematics one can see that since both of these sums are variable it is not possible to show precisely where Community aid is added to, or substituted for, state aid.

I would, however, like to look at the other element which according to Mr Jenkins has to be changed, and that is the agricultural policy. It has to be said that in these six months the Commission has not come up with any new proposals. The system of fixing prices remains the same and the results are the same. One may be relatively satisfied, because this time the price-increases in the Community have not been excessive: when 1 think, however, that a gigantic cereal crop has been predicted and that we shall guarantee certain prices in spite of the enormous quantities which will accumulate and which will have to be sold off at low prices, I fear that we shall have a very high expenditure on agriculture because of the false criteria which have marked the agricultural policy so far.

Now that we are faced with this question of cereals, the Community ought to start considering how to participate as a Community in world cereals agreements so as to make sure that stocks are used merely to smooth out cycles in supply and not to clear up the effects of mistaken pricing policies. The agricultural policy should also be given a greater sense of direction, concentrating particularly on the problems of Mediterranean agriculture.

In six months the Commission has given us nothing, and this is beginning to provoke discontent. There can be no halt to protectionism unless common policies are prepared for agricultural as well as industrial renewal and restructuring on a balanced regional basis and with Community instruments.

Another point raised by Mr Jenkins is the reply to be given to Portugal's application for membership and a probable application by Spain. I hope that, when replying to Portugal's application, the Commission will not repeat the political error it made when it had to give a reply to Greece, to whom it gave an essentially negative reply when it should have given a positive one. And I hope that serious preparations will be started in view of the probability of Spain's application, since both Mr Jenkins and Mr Simonet have stressed that the entry of these countries poses problems both for themselves - problems of adaptation, transition, etc. and for us. There will be problems relating to the functioning of our institutions and even a linguistic problem, since when Greece is a member how shall we find the people to translate from Greek into all the other languages? As for the institutional difficulties, we shall need to change our policy, because one cannot ask the countries who are coming in to accept the 'Commun

ity patrimony'; we shall have to think of a policy which is no longer tailored for six or nine countries but for 10, 11 or 12 countries. Otherwise we shall be forcing them to follow a mistaken policy and our own policy would also be wrong.

So the Commission ought to start thinking about the changes to be made to our orientation and institutions, and should initiate a debate here in this House before reforming the institutions. Another deficiency to which one of our colleagues has also drawn attention and which in the present situation seems a very serious one, is the complete absence of any thought to the need to relaunch seriously the North-South Dialogue. Let us not rest on the laurels of our good relations with the countries of the Lomé Convention; rather let us remember that the number of developing countries who are hoping for something from the countries of the north, in particular Europe, is far greater than the number of countries associated with us.

I should now like to say something about Mr Simonet's speech. I well appreciate the fact he emphasized, that the powers of the presidency are rather limited, and so not too many requests should be addressed to the President nor too many reproofs at the end of his mandate, as though he had it in his power to take decisions and therefore was responsible for decisions not taken. I do not therefore intend to criticize the previous presidency, nor do I have any doubt about Mr Simonet's good faith. I know him and I know his sincerity. I should simply like to give a judgment on the Council's capacity for action.

The Council is a defective body because it has excessive powers - legislative and executive powers which it cannot by its very nature exercise and which it claims to continue to exercise. The result of this is that decisions are either not taken or taken too late, or bad decisions are made, or inadequate decisions. Mr Jenkins and Mr Simonet have told us that they are thinking of how to tackle the problem of the Council increasing in number and that the difficulties are becoming increasingly great. I should like to warn in good time against a danger here. I do not want people to think that because a Council of 10 or 12 members is unable to function a small directorate should be set up of three or four large powers, leaving the secondrate countries outside - a system similar to that in the UNO, where there is an Assembly including everyone and a Security Council of which very few countries are members. I should like to warn against the temptation to think in these terms because it is certain that no one would

accept domination by two, three or four ministers representing two, three or four countries. This problem must be seen in the perspective of an elected Parliament, which would become aware of its duty to consider a reform of the structures.

On the subject of the elections. I should like to say just one thing; I should like Mr Simonet to say to his British colleague and our British colleagues to say to their colleagues in the British Parliament that everything today depends on them, that the British Government and the British Parliament should respect the commitment that Government has entered into to have the necessary legislation adopted in order that the elections are held on time. There are no other obstacles. The French, who also had difficulties, have shown themselves capable of overcoming them and are ready for ratification. It would be a serious matter if, because of international or unintentional delays, we were to end by postponing an election which an increasing number of people are awaiting with interest.

Turning to developments within the Community, Mr Simonet spoke of the problem of the Communities' own resources. On this point Mr Simonet knows that he is somewhat in conflict with himself, since the VAT project, which emerged from the work he carried out as Commissioner, is today held up principally by objection from the Belgian Government; if the method of raising the VAT, as set out in the agreement, is modified in the implementing regulation, we shall be renouncing our own resources at the very outset.

I have read that the Belgian Minister, speaking to Parliament on this problem, said that if we had the same rate of VAT in every country it would be natural to ask for this form for Community taxation purposes. But since for the moment the whole thing is fictitious there is no need to do so. Yet by not doing so we shall never make the second step, because the first step has not been made. In my opinion, Mr Simonet ought to tell his government that if the other countries can ask their citizens to fill in a further form, the Belgian Government can ask its citizens to do so too and so finally put the mechanism into operation.

On the subject of Greece's accession, I have already said that we have to realize that this entails the need for some changes to the Community itself. Mr Slmonet has indicated to us various macroeconomic monetary and budgetary objectives; in my view, attempts to revitalize the economy should take into account present regional, social and ecological needs without entertaining illusions which would create social tensions that prevented us from going forward.

I am sure that the Community will be able to develop its relations with the EFTA countries: one of these, Portugal, has already applied for membership of the Community; we await the others, but in the meantime we shall develop and improve cooperation. We are also certain that as a far as possible relations between the Community and COMECON will develop: the most important thing is that relations should develop with all the countries of Western Europe and not only with bureaucratic organizations. To intensify these relations is as useful for us as it is for them.

This year in all probability the crucial test for the Community will be the agreements within the GAIT to be concluded by the end of the year on the freedom of exchange. Let the Council and the whole Community remember that we shall not succeed in extending freedom of exchange if at the same time we do not implement valid economic policies.

Finally, Mr President, from these benches we shall firmly support the construction of Europe; not of any sort of Europe - a Europe of traders, as Willy Brandt used to say - but of a Europe of the people, of something different from what it has been up until now.

Mr Simonet concluded his speech by recalling that in order for the Community to make progress, the institutions would each have to do their own work as laid down in the Treaty. No, Mr Simonet, by following the Treaty the Community has become jammed and will continue to stand still and not develop!

In the next six months we shall have to set about a profound transformation of the Community, for the reasons and in the ways that I have stated, if there is to be a real decision-making centre, real democratic control, responsible participation by the Member States and not the present irresponsible participation of the States in the Council as it is organized at present. Thank you, Mr President.