In a debate with European Commission Vice-President for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, and Economic and Financial affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici (from France!) members of the European Parliament showed they were not very happy with Commission decisions revealing double standards in financial and economic decision-making.
Doubts about Commission’s objectivity were prompted by the extra leeway it recently granted France to get its budget deficit in order. “This was the third time for France. Why? That is wholly unclear”, said German MEP Bernd Lucke (ECR). In the meantime Greece is ‘killed’ and ‘no mercy’ has been shown for this relatively small member state. Although it is not politically correct to mention French Commissioner Moscovici, the former French minister of Finance in President Hollande’s government, added his weight. His ‘boss’, Vice-President Dombrovskis is a friendly but unsmiling former prime minister of a peripheral and small Baltic country, Latvia. He didn’t comment…
Another German MEP, Marcus Ferber (EPP) described the Commission’s decisions on whether or not a country complies with Stability and Growth Pact rules as ‘much too political’. He called for Commission decision-making to be neutral, by assigning more importance to its own Chief Economic Analyst’s assessments; and making this public. A proper answer to this reasonable point did not follow …
A third German MEP, Sven Giegold (Green) argued that the Commission is too tough on deficit criteria and too soft when it comes to judging macro-economic imbalances for example. ‘The Commission is not taking full account of member states’ fiscal efforts’, he said. Dombrowski pointed out that the Commission is reviewing the Eurozone as a whole. Does he mean on one side there are happy Germans, on the other side unhappy Greeks? Macroeconomics, averages, statistics… Do you know how you feel with one leg in a burning oven and the other one in a freezer? Average ok!
