BBC News Europe

Vendredi 2 décembre 2011

Pervenche Beres (France), Socialists and Democrats

Today we face an unprecedented crisis – the serious risk of the euro collapsing – and President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel have come up with their idea of revising the Treaty.

They have an obsessive focus on strictly balanced public finances, without consideration of the current economic situation – widespread harsh austerity measures, which are deepening the risk of a return to recession.

Furthermore, they both believe that member states facing financial difficulties should be penalised through the European Court of Justice. But that would be far from a system based on democratic legitimacy.

The French-German directorate tends to forget that it has to reconcile the views of 25 other countries to achieve any success.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron will exploit any transfer of competences to the European Commission to impose his will to dismantle important European social legislation such as the Working Time Directive.

Who can believe that embarking on a treaty revision would restore confidence in the market, when nobody knows what the outcome would be?

The EU has to find a new way out of this crisis, without any revision of the Treaty: reinforce the financial capacity of the European Financial Stability Fund, make the European Central Bank a lender of last resort, introduce a Financial Transaction Tax of 0.05% on all speculative operations, create eurobonds and project bonds to fund sustainable growth.

In the last 20 months the conservatives have demonstrated their lack of leadership by refusing to face their historic responsibilities. The time has come for progressive forces to give a new direction to Europe.