Lamberts (Greens): ‘We’ll do anything to kill the stability pact deal’

Brussels – The European Union has no future. The EU Council’s Stability Pact reform agreement is not what the Union needs. It does not help grow, it does not help feel better, it does not help appreciate the integration project. That’s why the European Greens want to bury it as early as the House vote on the call for inter-institutional negotiations scheduled for Wednesday (Jan. 17). It is the group’s co-chair, Philippe Lamberts, who is against the current agreement among member states and announces that he will fight it.

“We will do anything to make it fail,” he cuts short while speaking to the press in Brussels. Why? According to Lamberts and the Greens, it all comes down to the citizens. “Just to respond to the climate crisis will require additional public investment of 1.5 percent of GDP per year between now and 2050.” An issue that, according to the Belgian MEP, is not properly addressed: with the proposed new Stability Pact, he warns, “some public spending will have to be re-directed.” But how and where? Doubts linger among the Greens: “If we think we will find these resources from cuts in social services, health, or education, the number of Europeans who will feel left behind will increase.” In essence, Lamberts stresses, “This is not the way to make the transition” sustainable, which is why the Greens toward the idea of supporting rules on budget policies.

Should Parliament and the Council agree on the new economic governance rules as they do now, “we will kill space for other investments.” There is a belief, put to the extreme, that “we are shooting ourselves in both feet.” That is why “I hope that the negotiations will fail.” Here, Lamberts goes into the merits of the legislative process. The Greens will try to prevent the request to start negotiations from passing, knowing the likelihood of failure. So it is the inter-institutional confrontation that is the moment of truth, the one in which Lamberts will try to bury the stability pact that neither he nor his group likes.