Efter förhandlingar enades europaparlamentets tre största partigrupper under veckan i Strasbourg om en gemensam resolution kring de slutsatser som G20-länderna nådde i London tidigare. Gunnar Hökmark, som varit ansvarig i arbetet för EPP-ED, fick igenom en rad av sina krav som bl.a. innehåller ett tydligt fördömande av protektionistiska åtgärder och olika förslag för att få igång kreditmarknaderna.
Läs resolutionen i sin helhet nedan:
MOTION FOR A RESOLUTION
pursuant to Rule 103(2) of the Rules of Procedure
on the London G 20 Summit of 2 April 2009
Tabled by M Hökmark on behalf of the EPP-ED, Ms Beres and Ms Ferreira on behalf of the PSE and M Klinz on behalf of ALDE
The European Parliament,
having regard to the Leader’s statement of the London G20 Summit as well as their declaration on ”Strengthening the financial system” and on ”Delivering resources through the International financial institutions”,
having regard to the OECD list of countries not complying with the international standards for exchange of tax information published on 2 April 2009,
having regard to the Presidency Conclusions following the European Council meeting of 19/20 March 2009,
having regards to the Commission communication of 4 March 2009 entitled ”Driving Europe Recovery” (COM(2009)114),
having regards to the report by the High-Level Group on EU Financial Supervision chaired by Jacques de Larosière,
having regards to the Commission communication of 29 October 2008 entitled ”From financial crisis to recovery: a European framework for action” (COM(2008)706),
having regard to its resolution of 11 March 2009 on a European Recovery Plan,
having regard to the Commission communication adopted on 8 April 2009 ”Supporting developing countries in coping with the crisis”,
having regard to the recently released IMF report ”The implications of the Global Financial Crisis for Low-Income Countries”,
having regard to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and EU Member states aid commitments to tackle hunger and poverty;
having regard to the UNEP report ”Out of Crisis – Opportunity” of 16 February 2009, urging the G20 to come forward with a ”Global Green New Deal”;
having regard to the ILO report ”The Financial and Economic Crisis: A Decent Work Perspective” of 24 March 2009, urging the G-20 to come forward with a coordinated stimulus package oriented at social protection and job creation;
Whereas the world is falling deeper into a recession whose effects no country and no sector can expect to avoid; whereas world-wide economic performance is declining fast in 2009 and only slow recovery is expected in 2010 in the most optimist projections;
B. whereas the consequences of the financial crisis on the real economy have resulted in exceptional economic circumstances that require timely, targeted, temporary and proportional measures and decisions in the interests of finding solutions to an unprecedented global economic and employment situation;
C. whereas the main challenges for countering the downturn of the international and the European economy now is the lack of confidence on the financial and capital markets as well as rising unemployment and the contraction of international trade;
Ca. Whereas the current recession should be used as an opportunity to promote the Lisbon-Göteborg goals and the global commitment to fight unemployment, climate change and reduce energy consumption;
D.whereas the Global Plan for Recovery and Reform encompasses the following aims: (1) restore confidence, growth and jobs; (2) repair the financial system to restore lending; (3) strengthen financial regulation and rebuild trust; (4) fund and reform the international financial institutions to overcome the crisis and prevent future ones; (5) promote global trade and investment and reject protectionism, underpin prosperity; and (6) build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery;
E. whereas international coordination is essential for both resurrecting and then rebuilding the global economy;
F. whereas membership of the euro area has proven to enhance economic stability in the relevant Member states, which is due to their efforts to abide to the Maastricht criteria and the Stability and Growth Pact as well as being shielded from currency fluctuations;
G. whereas several Member states have encountered severe balance of payments problems, some of them having to resort to the IMF and the EU for relief;
H. whereas the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, must underpin ACP-EC cooperation within the Cotonou Partnership Agreement;
I. whereas, as a result of the financial crisis, some donor countries have reduced their financial contribution to Official Development Assistance (ODA) to developing countries, and put in danger the Millennium Development Goals;
J. whereas the ACP countries are dependent on exports of commodities that constitute over 50% of their foreign currency revenue, and the financial crisis is resulting in decreasing exports from and remittance flows into many developing countries, reduced access to credit and reduced foreign direct investment, and the plummeting of commodity prices;
K. Whereas offshore centres enable abusive avoidance and evasion of both taxation and financial regulation;
L. whereas international trade growth is slowing down due to the lack of credit and finance and to the general slow down of the world economy;
whereas strong multilateral cooperation is needed to prevent protectionist measure the financial/economic crisis may provoke;
General remarks
1. Welcomes the Group of Twenty’s Global Plan for Recovery and Reform; takes note that the Global Plan is in line with the efforts already undertaken within the European Union, so as to avoid conflicting policies whose effects cancel out each other; Welcomes the G20’s recognition that a global crisis requires a global solution and an integrated strategy to restore confidence, growth and jobs; this recognition requires a serious follow-up at the next meeting of the G20 which will take place in early autumn this year;
2. Believes that the task ahead for the world’s leaders is not to patch up the present financial and economic system, but to recognize that a new balance must be struck in the regulatory framework which would take into account environmental and social sustainability, opportunity, revived global economic growth and job creation; Calls for better and all encompassing regulation and supervision for a new regulatory and governance framework to be developed; Considers that the G20 should have addressed the problem of global imbalances in trade and finance, which played a fundamental role in the current economic crisis;
3. Underlines that all the commitments made must be respected in full, put in place rapidly and further detailed, at national and international level, in order to rebuild confidence and maximise effectiveness; takes note of the FSB and IMF assignment to monitor progress made on the agreed Action Plan and invites them to present their report to the European Parliament;
4. Stresses that the immediate priority must be to get the real economy moving again, to ensure the function of capital markets and lending, to sustain and promote employment, and to protect people from the adverse impact of the crisis, with special care for the poorest and most vulnerable;
5. Lauds the G20 for having largely opted for solutions based on loans and guarantees, which will maximise economic effects while help reducing the long term impact on government coffers of the more than 1 trillion Dollar programmes;
Restoring growth and jobs
6. Welcomes the agreement on 832bn euro additional financial resources for the IMF, other financial institutions and trade finance and the commitment to deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy while ensuring long-run fiscal sustainability; however notices the fact that no additional European fiscal stimulus was agreed; recognizes the margin for action is different for each country, but each one needs to act to the limits of its possibilities;
7. Recognises the essential role of central banks in this effort, their rapid reduction of interest rates, and welcomes the G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluation of national currencies, which could trigger a vicious circle; welcomes the ECB’s successive rate cuts to foster growth, and its fast provision of short-term financial facilities destined to revive inter-bank lending; recalls the necessity to create conditions that facilitate the passing on to borrowers of interest rate cuts; Calls for every measure to be taken to enable financial markets to function properly again, including an urgent restoration of domestic lending and international capital flows;
8. Notes with concern the rapid rise of public debt and budget deficits; stresses the importance to establish sound state finance as soon as possible and to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability in order to avoid putting too much burden on future generations, noting that individually this should be considered in the context of total indebtedness;
9. Regrets that global imbalances, which are at the root of the financial crisis, have not been addressed by the G20 summit; recalls that for preventing financial crisis to occur in the future, the underlying causes have to be addressed (i.e. excessive US deficit being financed by excessive Chinese trade surpluses), which has implications far beyond the realm of banking and financial regulation as well as institutional governance; Considers that an effective multilateral answer to the crisis requires addressing i.e. the causes of exchange rate imbalances and commodity price volatility within multilateral frameworks; urges therefore the European Council to adopt a common position in order to tackle these issues in view of the next G20 summit of New-York;
Strengthening financial supervision and regulation
10. Welcomes the common approach to better regulating the financial sector and improve financial supervision on the basis of greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries ; urges all governments to act according to their commitments made during the G20 meeting; Considers that the decisions and commitments of the G20 summit represent a minimum and not a maximum; welcomes that the EU is more ambitious in the scope and requirements of regulation and supervision;
11. Stresses the importance of rebuilding confidence in the financial sector which is key to restore lending to the real economy as well as international capital flows; insists on the need to urgently deal with impaired banking assets which are constraining lending; urges EU governments and competent authorities to ensure full and transparent disclose from banks the impairment of balance sheets, taking into consideration the Commission guidelines on the Treatment of Impaired Assets in the Community Banking Sector and to act in a coordinated manner while respecting competition rules; invites G20 governments to disclose how their impaired asset programs work and what their results are; recommends maximizing international cooperation and rejecting financial and regulatory protectionism;
12.Welcomes the decision to regulate and oversee all systemically important institutions, markets and instruments (including hedge funds) but believes that further measures are needed to stamp out speculative excesses and regulation and supervision must include those activities whose size individually may be judged non-systemic but which collectively represent a potential risk to financial stability; insists on the need to develop efficient cooperation and information sharing mechanisms between national authorities to ensure effective cross-border supervision while defending open markets;
13. Approves the G20 countries’ decision to adopt the Basel II capital framework and the efforts to strengthen prudential regulatory standard as soon as possible;
14. Takes the view that high-level principles for cross-border cooperation on crisis management need to be urgently implemented; in the light of the growing interactions between national financial systems, urges relevant authorities to cooperate at international level with the view to prepare for and manage financial crises;
15. Welcomes the G20’s decision to promote integrity and transparency in the financial markets as well as increased responsibility of financial actors; welcomes the G20 pledge to reform compensation regimes in a more sustainable way as part of the financial regulatory review and insists on the importance of linking incentives to long-term performance and avoiding incentives that induce irresponsibility, and to guarantee an industry-wide application of the new principles in order to ensure a level playing field; will remain extremely vigilant regarding the effective implementation of the principles relating to pay and compensation in financial institutions and calls for adopting more stringent measures in this area;
16. Welcomes the measures with regards to credit rating agencies that aim at increasing transparency and enhancing cooperation between the national supervisory authorities; remains concerned by the lack of competition in this sector and calls for significantly lower market entry barriers;
17. Welcomes the intention to reach agreement on a single set of accounting standards, deplores the fact that the FASB has modified the definition of fair value for US market players and urges the Commission to adapt IAS 39 to this change without waiting for a decision by the IASB;
18. Calls on the next G20 summit to agree on coordinated and concrete action both to close down all tax and regulatory havens and to close ”onshore” tax and regulatory loopholes which permit widespread tax avoidance even in major financial centres; Welcomes the G20 statement regarding bank secrecy; recommends that the EU should adopt at its own level the adequate legislative framework regarding tax havens and calls on its international partners to do the same;
Strengthening our global financial institutions
19. Fully supports the decision to assign the central role of coordinating the agreed agenda to the newly renamed and expanded Financial Stability Board; supports the G20’s decision to provide it with a stronger institutional basis and an enhanced capacity; underlines the importance of sharing common principles and ensuring convergence of rules in the financial services area to cope with global market players
20. Welcomes the G20’s plan to reform international financial institutions and calls for these reforms to begin as soon as possible; expects a far-reaching reform of global economic and financial governance which must promote democracy, transparency, and accountability, ensure coherence between the policies and procedures of the international economic and financial institutions and encourages reconsideration of the conditionalities applied to most IMF and World Bank lending;
21. Calls in addition for a greater representation of developing countries in international financial institutions; welcomes the commitment to an open, transparent and merit-based selection process for the leadership of the international financial institutions; urges the EU as a consequence of this to speak with one voice;
22. Asks the Commission for assessing the additional amount of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights that may become necessary, as well as for an evaluation by the ECB of this expansion’s effects on world-wide price stability;
Resisting protectionism and promoting global trade and investment
23. Endorses the G20’s pledge to increase the resources available to global financial institutions by $ 850 billion to support growth in emerging markets and developing countries; Welcomes the substantial increase of the resources of the IMF, which is the main supplier of financial assistance to countries with balances of payments problems, including EU Member states, and which acts to support growth in emerging markets and development countries;
24. Welcomes the progress made by the IMF with its new Flexible Credit Line, moving away from its past prescriptive and rigid lending and conditionality framework, as illustrated by the recent statement by the IMF, in its report on ’the implications of the global financial crisis for low-income countries’ that ’in formulating spending policies, priority should be given to protecting or expanding social programmes or bringing forward approved investments, and, in general, to preserving the momentum toward achieving the MDGs’;
25. Welcomes the reaffirmed commitment to the MDGs and the promise to make an additional $ 50 billion available ‘to support social protection, boost trade and safeguard development in low income countries’; calls for its disbursement to be made not only on form of loans, but as well in form of direct grants where possible, in order to support social protection and boost trade;
26. Regrets that the G20’s promises on Aid for Trade and overseas development assistance (ODA) were insufficient. Stresses that although the communiqué lists financial measures to increase resources for the developing world through the World Bank and IMF, there was no specific commitment to ensure that Aid for Trade represents additional funding;
27. Welcomes the pledge to further promote global trade and investment; is alarmed however by the fall in world trade, which threatens a further deepening of the global recession; stresses the importance of reaching a rapid and successful Doha Round; which is to redress the imbalances in the world trading system which have worked to the detriment of developing countries;
28. Rejects any form of protectionism both in the real economy and in the financial sector as a reaction to the economic downturn and falling world trade;
29. Calls on the next G20 summit to address also the reform of the world trading system and the governance of the WTO to promote fair trade, reverse the growing inequalities between North and South, improve the coherence between commercial, social and environmental policies and make the WTO more democratic, transparent and accountable;
30. Calls on the EU Member States to present actions and instruments introduced in response to the crisis in developing countries in view of building a coordinated response of the EU; calls for the implementation of the actions thus identified to be assessed at the next Monterrey report on financing development;
31. Warns on the lasting food crisis, which requests immediate action and reforms to make sure agricultural production is sustainable in developing countries;
Ensuring a fair and sustainable recovery for all
32. Welcomes the G20’s acknowledgement of the importance of a more sustainable global economy; Highlights that a binding agreement on climate change at the forthcoming Copenhagen conference is indeed critical. Stresses however, that the G20 leaders should recognize the broad nature of global sustainability challenges such as fisheries, forests, and water crises which affect people in developing countries the most;
33. Asks the Commission to launch, in the context of the reflection on the future of the Sustainable Development Strategy, the necessary processes aimed at fully taking into account climate-change consequences for all the existing policies;
34. Stresses the need for the effective implementation of the Climate and Energy package and more investments in renewables, eco-innovation, eco-friendly energy and energy efficiency, which should be a central part of the Energy Action Plan for 2010-2014;
35. Asks the next G20 summit to concider the ”Decent work agenda” as proposed by the ILO, which should in particular combine a commitment to universal respect of human rights at work, core labour standards and the elimination of child labour;
36. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the ECB, the parliaments and governments of the Member states, the states members of the G20 and the IMF