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Roemer: 'EU summit is a major step in the wrong direction’

29 June 2012

Roemer: 'EU summit is a major step in the wrong direction’

SP leader Emile Roemer has described himself as ‘far from satisfied’ by the outcome of this week’s European Council summit. In his view, what has in reality been decided is to establish a banking union. In addition, Council President Herman van Rompuy is seizing the opportunity to develop his ideas on a federal Europe. ‘Soon everything will revolve around bankrupt banks, without the banking sector first being tackled by the government of the country in question,’ says Roemer. ‘A very bad development. It’s unbelievable that our own Prime Minister Mark Rutte voted for this, given that it stands completely at odds to what he told Parliament earlier in the week.’'

Roemer is confident that the present approach will once again prove inadequate. 'The emergency fund will never be big enough to beat off attacks by speculators, certainly not without thoroughgoing regulation of the financial sector,’ he says. ‘It will quickly turn out to be unavoidable for the ECB to play an important role in this.'

The SP leader welcomes the plans to stimulate the economy, but fears that they will be shown to be insufficient. 'Of course it’s good to try to drag the economy out of a blind alley. That’s what we’ve been arguing is needed for some time in the Netherlands and it’s important at the European level too. But as long as the EU’s vulnerable economies remain under pressure to subject their economies to death by austerity, these efforts will quickly come to nothing. We would be better managing the strong eurozone countries to boost domestic demand. Then we’d be making a start on finding a solution for an economy in heavy weather.'

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