04/05/2009
Twenty six and a half million reasons for a new recovery plan
With the forecast for economic growth for the European Union plunging to -4%, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said it was time for a new recovery plan for Europe.
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said “Europe needs a new recovery plan and it needs it now. What European leaders agreed to do at their summit in December is not enough for the scale of recession we are now seeing.”
“I said back in November that Europe’s response to the crisis was inadequate, and that was when the Commission was predicting zero growth and a risk of contraction in 2009. Now the European Commission say that the economy is shrinking by 4%, and there will be 11% unemployment. That’s over 26.5 million people out of work next year in the European Union.”
“I fear that the Commission is once again being too optimistic. But 26.5 million unemployed is a terrible prospect, and I suspect it will be more. That’s at least 26.5 million good reasons for the European Commission to propose fresh investments in growth to the EU Council in June.”
“Faced with no less than 26.5 million unemployed next year Europe’s conservative leaders cannot claim that Europe has already done enough.”
“At the G20 European leaders promised the world that they would deliver the scale of sustained fiscal effort necessary to restore growth. They now need to do it.”
At their meeting in Toulouse on 24 April, heads of list for the European elections from PES member parties demanded that in the first hundred days following the European elections in June seven steps are taken to fight the recession and mass unemployment including a new, strong recovery plan for Europe.
In a letter to the trade union movement on May 1st – International Workers day – PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said he understood the anger of shipbuilders and railway workers who demonstrated outside the EPP Congress in Warsaw last week. The previous week Poul Nyrup Rasmussen met workers from Airbus and Molex.
Consult the PES plan for the 1st 100 hundred days after the European elections
For the May 1st letter to the trade unions click here
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Julian Scola, Communications Advisor - Media & Campaigns
Party of European Socialists, Rue du Trône, 98, B-1050 Brussels
Mobile +32 486 117 394
julian.scola@pes.org
