Schulz: Italy and France are undertaking courageous reforms, but it will take time for positive results to come

Martin Schulz offered a helping hand to Matteo Renzi and François Hollande: the two political leaders (belonging to his own party), said the President of the European Parliament, are making big things, but they need time and credit because their real range cannot be understood immediately. “Italy and France are undertaking courageous reforms,” said Schulz at the Sixth Cohesion Forum, “but we have to be realistic: it will take time for the positive results of these reforms to bear fruit.” After all, he said, “This is the nature of structural reforms.”

Hawks are then trying to loosen the tension, but Italy and France, in exchange, should be committed in other fronts. “Structural reforms are just one side of the coin,” while “the other side is investing for growth” with an eye on budgets too of course. It is true, according to Schulz, that “a budget cuts cure approach alone would not be the cure we need,” still “we cannot leave mountains of debt to our children.”

Schulz then invited everyone not to relax: the worst seem behind us – “Thank God or Thank Mario Draghi and his ‘whatever it takes’” – but “the crisis will only be over when the 25 million European unemployed have found a job again, when our children will no longer be in danger of becoming a lost generation.”