HASfter the Covid-19 pandemic, in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in a context of growing pressure between China and the United States, our major strategic objective as Europeans is to increase our autonomy and our resilience.
The ongoing revision of the 1997 stability pact, that is to say the rules which govern what States can do in terms of budget deficit and public debt, cannot be thought of outside of this context.
This reform must imperatively enable Member States to ensure the sustainability of their financing models while making it possible to increase the investments essential to strengthening our sovereignty in the ecological and digital transition and in defense.
Today, there is a growing consensus at European level on the need to review the budgetary framework, not only so as not to remain in the current vagueness, with rules which are not in fact applied, but above all because it is necessary, as the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron said in September 2017, to move from “financial civil war between us”as was the case during the eurozone crisis, to a common investment strategy.
German influence in question
However, let us be clear, the current proposal to reform the Stability Pact, presented on April 26 by the European Commission, does not achieve this objective. It would not allow States, as demonstrated in particular by the European think tank Bruegel, to invest sufficiently to meet our European objectives.
The text of the reform proposal was revised at the last moment just before its publication by the European Commission, under the direct influence of the German Finance Minister [Christian Lindner]. However, the German government seems to forget that, if Germany has a better performance than France or Spain, for example, with regard to the public debt to GDP indicator, it is notably at the price of a sub- notorious investment in defense, for example, and having accumulated a climate debt greater than that of France.
The reform of the stability pact can no longer ignore this requirement for coherence and it is out of the question for us to support a new pact which would make it impossible for States to invest while requiring them, moreover, these same investments, within the framework of NATO for defense, of Green Deal for the ecological transition and digital transition.
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