Herman Van Rompuy
15/10/2013
Επισκέφτηκε σήμερα το Πανεπιστήμιο μας ο Πρόεδρος του Ευρωπαϊκού Συμβουλίου Herman Van Rompuy όπου συζητήσαμε για την ανεργία και την οικονομική κρίση. Στη συνέχεια ακολουθεί η ερώτηση που του είχα θέσει και η απάντηση που μου έδωσε. Τις επόμενες μέρες θα προβώ και σε μια σύντομη μετάφραση…
Φωτογκαλερί: Herman Van Rompuy
Georgina Athansiou “Good morning Mr. President. We are very pleased to have you here today. I am Georgina Athanasiou and I am a second year law student. I have got a few questions I would like to ask you. So my first question is …
1) Unemployment is one of the major problems with which Cyprus and other European countries are currently faced. Although measures for tackling unemployment have been adopted, recent surveys show that the unemployment rate among young people in Cyprus rose to 32.3% . How will our economy recover and society progress, if young people are not given the opportunity to contribute? ”
Herman Van Rompuy
“We have discovered in the council that you are not only in a financial crisis that started from 2008 coming from the other side of the ocean we are also entering a euro zone crisis. Then we discovered that we had a lot of problems and witnesses in a lot of member states. Not only on Greece but in a lot of member states and all the structure problems came to surface. We created one currency but we forgot that we need also more common policy. It was architecture failure of the construction of the euro zone. Then we had a closer look to it and we discover that a lot of countries did not practice orthodox finance and eclectic competitive. You are living beyond to your needs not as an individual not as a government but as a nation and this was the case in Greece, Spain, Portugal and also in Cyprus. And when we went closer and look to the figures, we saw that you have deposits from 10 to 50% which is completely unsustainable. I come from a country which had huge problems and at the end of the 70s-80s we had tackle this problems and it cost a lot of sacrifice and years and years of effort to get the economy on.To practice good policies. In the good years before the financial crisis we could have practice it and we didn’t . We have to try to find solution for the problem,(the high enterprises in terms of economic growth). The people are not responsible but a lot of counties were badly ruled. So we saw that some countries, Greece was the first one was even and curtly loaded in the stream of 2010 not cable any more to raise funds in the national financial market because there was no trust to the countries, because the public dept was too high and investors duped that country could repay their depts. And that’s why the European Union jumped in and that’s why we have Greece with 250 billion Euros. Most of those have to be repaired one day and we have to convince that people in the countries without urgent problems to borrow money to Greece to Ireland to Spain to Portugal for their banks and all the others and also at the end this year to Cyprus. So otherwise they will go backwards that’s why the European Union jumped in to help those countries to show solidarity. I know it is not always obvious and is not always clear but the European Union is often considered as a punitive institution. Europeans from all the countries show that solidarity by providing laws in order to avoid the corrupts of some other countries. So we discovered the new witnesses in the economies and correcting this demands sacrifices and demands efforts and those efforts have to be spread as fair as possible in the society. I said that I come from a country that we can speak with some experience of it, as high as Greece had in 2009 , 2010. We corrected this in a high price and we worked years and years and even and after few years we saw the first results… but it was not the most popular achieve for politicians and political party and my party was in then in a dept. So we had to tackle the problems find solutions and with some painful solutions in the meantime we have to make the crisis as more as possible in terms of employment. That’s what I discussed this morning with president Anastasiades and some of the members of the stuff the ministers. That’s why in the European Union we made the budget budged of 8 billion Euros for those countries with high youth unemployment. All projects to get young people back in to work and our programs are not related to the state but to the economy you have, to wait until you currently recover so progress when you need it . I am not here to tell you that there are easy solutions. That is not my job because if I say this to you, that we may have to make efforts that on the other side is not a popular message. So I will not leave this room as a hero! That is not my intention. I am here also to tell you the truth but in terms of unemployment policies we need really to set that as soon as possible not only here in Cyprus but also in all those countries with huge unemployment that figures every young men and woman but with huge unemployment rates and that’s the case in 4 and more countries that I mentioned already several times but also fortune case in Cyprus. The bank sector made big growth in the eruption of the financial crisis and that’s why in the Union now first of all we work hard to save the banks not because we like them but because if we didn’t save the banks there would be much more series that there is now . But we at the same time, ask restructure so that this will not happen again and we are organizing now a much stricter servile of the banks not at a national lawn because we experienced that national authorities and national regulators, surveillance authorities will not fail. We have to prevent that this can’t happen again. We keep the financial sector strictly under control but. We need much more sovereigns in the monetary of policies of governments of member states so they are not free to do what they like and of course this is not a popular message and make the European Union not popular but we all again have to prevent that this physical crisis. We have to monitor very closely to sovereign very closely the physical positions of the countries and its revolutions. But at least for the upcoming generations this may not happen again. I have worked very hard during my presidency to get a much better architecture of economic and monetary. My common currency is to leave … strict policies we but if we don’t take these measures because we don’t like them we are not asking countries and governments to abort this consolidation… I once read a cote that said “you cannot change the past you can only change the future” we have to focus on the future in order to give to your generation the chance and hope that you can succeed we need those measures especially to deal youth unemployment . People are asking me why focus on youth unemployment… we made collectively this choice in the EU to focus and fight against the consciences of the financial crisis and focus on young people, to bring down as much as possible youth unemployment. I am not completely satisfactory but that’s the way we see it!”