(Xinhua) European Union leaders rejected here on Thursday any new stimulus plans as the United States has urged recently, saying that the EU has done enough in this respect.
‘It is a huge, huge effort,’ European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said before a two-day summit, referring to the 200-billion-euro European Economic Recovery Plan put forward by the commission in November last year.
He said that the EU actually has invested 400 billion euros plus automatic stabilizers such as employment and healthcare welfare.
‘So instead of speaking already of the next plan, lets implement the plan we have agreed,’ he added.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, described any more stimulus plans as a ‘deadly idea.’
The Unites States recently called on governments to invest more public spending to boost demand and announced on Wednesday that the U.S. Federal Reserve will launch 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars to lower rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Tuesday in a joint letter countries with excessive public debts to pay off their debts as quickly as possible.
Both of them are opposed to any more public spending in stimulating the economy, hit hard by the global financial crisis.
But European labor and socialist leaders joined the United States to push European governments for more effort to counter the crisis.
‘There is a broad agreement that we must do more than is in the package now,’ Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, leader of the European Socialists, said at a meeting with EU leaders.
‘If we don’t do more we risk having 25 million unemployed people at the beginning of next year,’ he added.
Source:Xinhua
Comments