Europe's future - pooling debt only possible with better governance

The Chairman of the EPP Group, Joseph Daul, has welcomed today's speech in the plenary session of the European Parliament by Jyrki Katainen, Prime Minister of Finland, on the EU's current and future challenges. The EPP Group Chairman agrees that Europe needs more integration, now more than ever. In his view, to achieve this, three elements are crucial: social and fiscal harmonisation, application of the existing European rules and more convergence and coherence.

For Joseph Daul, real European convergence should mean pooling our debt: "Is it not time to reflect on, responsibly, sharing of a part of the public debt in Europe? This would make it possible to reduce the cost of the debt and lower interest rates, and to direct part of our resources to investment. Of course, this partial pooling must be accompanied by better governance."

"To achieve the growth that Europe urgently needs, we need to be united", underlined Eija-Riitta Korhola MEP, Head of the Finnish Delegation of the EPP Group.

"Achieving the digital single market is a good example of a proposal that is progressing much too slowly and needs more unity. I'm glad that Finland sees the enormous potential of the digital single market and I hope that it can, along with the Parliament, spread this message in the Council."