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Jean-Claude Trichet, preşedintele Băncii Centrale Europene (ECB) a primit Premiul Charlemagne (Karl I, der Große, primul împărat franco-german) acordat de Germania personalităţilor cu merite în domeniul "unificării europene". De fapt, acest premiu se acordă acelora care servesc interesele germane.
Câteva idei exprimate de Trichet într-un interviu pentru Aachener Zeitung, cu ocazia acordării premiului:
Trichet: The real problem in the euro area is that the economic union – the “E” in EMU –between the euro countries has not been properly implemented. There is a need for much improvement on that score. The most important lesson from the crisis is that the euro countries must coordinate their economic and financial policies better – and do so urgently.
Question: The Heads of State or Government recently agreed on tougher rules for the Stability Pact. Is this enough?
Trichet: No. We are asking the Heads of Government, the European Commission and the European Parliament to go further and to be far more rigorous. We need automatic sanctions for excessive deficits. The entire process – from the discovery of looming budget difficulties to the actual imposition of penalties – should be automatic. We saw in the past all the dangers of the complacency of governments.
Question: Is it conceivable that a euro country might leave the single currency?
Trichet: No, that is entirely unrealistic. There’s not even any
provision for it in the EU Treaty. The euro area is a community that
shares the same destiny: each member is dependent on the others.
Question: When Chancellor Kohl paved for the way for the euro – not single-handedly, but with real determination – he saw it above all as a political, not an economic, decision. Was this a key conceptual defect of the common currency?
Trichet: That is a very direct question. The fundamental idea of having European unity has always been to guarantee peace, prosperity and stability on our continent. From the outset this has included the idea of a common market. Europeans’ efforts to join closely together and create a single currency have deep roots in European politics. Chancellor Kohl, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt before him, and, with them, many other political leaders across Europe, pressed ahead with the project, knowing that it would combine peace and prosperity. Monetary Union is a resounding success. The scepticism about its capacity to maintain price stability has not been borne out at all. The problem is that not everyone has learnt their lessons from the global financial crisis. We have to re-affirm the visions of Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and of Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand.
ŞI ACUM, ATENŢIE MARE:
Question: The promise of taking the decisive step towards political union with the euro has not been kept. Will the promise ever be fulfilled?
Trichet: To fulfil this promise, cooperation between the 27 EU countries, and even more so between the 17 euro countries, must be improved significantly. That much is obvious. Better coordination of fiscal and competition policy over time automatically creates greater political cooperation. At present each of us has his or her own opinion on the long-term outlook for political union in Europe. As a European citizen, I am convinced that we should head further down the path of significantly closer political union. However, this is not one of the European Central Bank’s responsibilities. Jean Monnet once commented that he was unsure what the European political institutional framework would look like in the future, but was sure that today’s improvements would lay the foundations for the European institutional framework of tomorrow.
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