21.5.13

Europe “living a Sicilian situation” - austerity a “false solution”

DURING a visit to Macau two prominent Portuguese politicians argued that the austerity implemented in several European countries is a bad option as it disregards growth.
The former Public Works and Planning Minister (1995-1999), Joao Cravinho, was especially critical of what he considers to be a biased set of policies that benefit the most powerful European states, like Germany. He said that during the past few years Europe has been “living a Sicilian situation” due to the “flexibility in law interpretation concerning the most powerful European Union countries.”
Cravinho, who was member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1994, argued that there’s “no sense of sharing the burdens” caused by the crisis and that “austerity is a false solution.”
The influential former minister added that in the current development of the European Union it is wrong to assume that “each country is autonomous and independent when sharing a common currency.”  According to him, austerity leads to “higher ratios of debt to GDP and to recession… The results in the market are exactly opposed to what was expected.”
For Cravinho, cutting wages is not part of the solution, since it would be “foolish to believe that you can get cut wages in order to compete in countries like China.” The “key element of the solution” lies in “making the Central European Bank a true central bank, in the same way as the Bank of England.” The engineer predicted that if there are no major changes during the next two years, the next Portuguese government “will be very weak, not even being able to maintain the policies that are being applied now.”
Elisa Ferreira was the other speaker during the conference-dinner hosted in Hotel Grand Lapa by the Institute of European Studies of Macau. A member of the European Parliament since August 2004, Ferreira was Minister for Environment (1995-1999) and Minister for Planning (1999-2002). Like Cravinho, she is a member of the Socialist Party and her talk came to the same conclusions, namely that austerity has became an “ideology” and that “it’s very bad when ideology replaces reality and technical assessment.”
The politician stated that “Europe must go back to basics, Europe [EU] was a political project and not economical… If you are competing with each other, the winner takes it all.” She finished her talk warning that “there are dangers growing inside Europe and you should not overplay when you’re playing with fire“.
Elisa Ferreira and Joao Cravinho were in Macau to take part in the international conference on “Reassessing the EU-Asia Pacific Relationship in the Context of the EU Crisis” that took place over Friday and Saturday. Around seventy experts participated in the conference held at the University of Macau which was co-organized by the UM’s Faculty of Law and the Asia-Pacific Association for EU Studies.
(in MDT)

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