 Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your reception, thank you for your invitation. It's a pleasure and honor for me to address such an audience. I have attended part of this morning's meeting and I am very impressed by the level and quality of your debates. And I feel a bit awkward because first, as you hear, English is not my native language and I am not bilingual unfortunately and I am not an academic, I am a politician and I am a French. And my first contact with Irishmen was on a rugby playground. It was a good memory. I lost this time. But I very much admire Ireland, the fighting spirit and I and we in Brussels, in the European Parliament, and we in France appreciate all the endeavours made by the Irish people for the last two years. Before starting my speech, I would like to pay tribute to old friends. I am particularly happy to see again former President Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament and of course former T-shirt John Bruton. We were members of the European Convention ten years ago and it was particularly instrumental in devising what has become the current Lisbonne Treaty. I have just visited several member states of the European Union who are now facing difficulties. I was in a few days ago in Rome, I was in Madrid. Earlier this week I was in Lisbonne. Today I am in Dublin. I won't go to Athens, it's hopeless. As long as they don't produce the real figures and as long as they don't make any efforts, it's pointless. If there are questions, I'm ready to answer. But here it's very important, here it's very important because Ireland is a very important member of the Eurozone and again all the efforts, all the endeavours you have been making in the recent period must be supported and I am very happy to hear that last night or early this morning the European Council has recognized that after these efforts including after the remarkable referendum recently the Irish efforts had to be supported and backed by the European Union. Two points. First, the lessons of the crisis. There is an advantage in every crisis. They are lessons to be drawn and we must build on the lessons or what we can learn from the crisis. First, I don't know whether you have discussed this point either during this seminar or during a previous one but there was an original mistake at the beginning of the Euro system over ten years ago and everybody made the mistake. The politicians, of course, we are always making mistakes but also the academics, the bankers, the central bankers, the journalists, etc. When we adopted the Euro and discarded our old national currencies of course there was unification of short-term interest rates. It was logic, it was healthy economically with one single reference, the interest rates of the European central bank of course the consequence was obvious for the interbank and short-term interest rates. But another phenomenon happened which was un forecast and which remained unnoticed. It was a spontaneous approximation and almost unification of all the interest rates of the sovereign states, the public bond yields. And they approximate not down in the middle, the average between the highest and the lowest. But at the lowest level enabling those member states who previously had to pay a spread relatively high as compared with Germany or other countries from northern Europe to fund their debt at a very low level encouraging them to fund their public finances, their investments but not only encouraging the states or localities but also private economic actors, banks, enterprises, households to fund all their projects too much by debt. And this original mistake brought about a kind of original sin in not in all the members of the Eurozone but in many members of the Eurozone including unfortunately my own country. And this continued even after the Lehman Brothers crisis until the end of 2009 until the Greek problem when after an election, a general election in Greece the newly elected government discovered that the public figures released by their predecessors were faked in an extraordinary way overtaking the usual standards of faking in Greece if I can put it that way. And then suddenly the notation agencies, the markets, the financial operators discovered that in spite of being members of the same currency area while the risks of national debts were different depending on the quality of the management of the different members of the zone and it was the origin of the problems, of many problems we meet today. Second lesson from the crisis The crisis has revealed that the level of our common interests is far higher than the most Europeans among us imagined, contemplated beforehand. A few examples, when there was a crisis here in Dublin a few weeks later there were direct consequences in Poland some poles working here went back to their native country. When the crisis broke out in the UK a first consequence appeared in France, in my region, in my constituency the south-west, the Périgaux, when we had to close down an airport because the direct link between London and Bergerac had no customers left due to the downfall of the pound compared with the euro, all the retired Englishmen living in the south-west of France were ruined so we closed the airport. Another example, when the German car industry met great difficulties due to the recession, the downturn of 2010 the German government decided to give grants to the customers of cars who would buy new cars polluting less than the older ones. These grants were used by most of the beneficiaries, German beneficiaries, to buy not German cars but cars built in Romania by the subsidiary of the French car maker Renault so the German taxpayers paid for an increase in salaries and creating jobs in Romania and for distributing dividends in France. And a last example, it's not only economics but it's amusing and revealing when last summer there was lethal disease caused in northern Germany caused by production of soybeans germs, two or three consumers died. Well, it was a disaster for the Spanish production of vegetables because there was a kind of panic and nobody in Europe wanted to buy and eat Spanish cucumbers. So you see the crisis has revealed that now we live exactly in the same market in the same economic community and last lesson from the crisis in this community of interests, community of destinies. Unfortunately, our mechanism of solidarity has not developed as fast as the community of interest. And we meet a lot of difficulties to try to adjust our common rules to this changing economy and this common interests. And we have seen that for the last two years a lot has been done by the European leaders. They have held almost 20 European summits called every time summits of the last chance. It was the case last night and unfortunately we note that they need a lot of time before taking the right decision. When the decision is taken, it takes a lot of more time to implement the decision and there is a very severe discrepancy between the time of financial markets and the political calendar in our national states and let alone at the European level. For instance, to give two examples, last July, almost one year ago, at a summit of the last chance, there was an important decision taken to enlarge the possibility of intervention of the European Fund of Solidarity, the FESF, and to make it more flexible. But legally speaking, it was without the name, this agreement was without the name a treaty. A treaty requires ratification by the parlements of the interested states. The process of ratification was relatively rapid according to our usual standards, but it took us three months and a half. Three months and a half and it was relatively painful in some member states and in particular the ratification was got in Slovakia at the expense of the existence of the then Slovak government. They had to resign to obtain the ratification from their parliament. Three months and a half, it was too late for the markets. And so the European leaders had to meet again in December to take the same decision, but with different wording and it's then that they decided to enshrine the political decision into a new treaty with an extraordinary name, Fiscal Compact. Compact is a word which has no meaning in no known language, perhaps in Gaelic, I don't know, but Fiscal Compact, the markets were reassured for 24 hours, but then it took three more months to draft the draft treaty, to translate into writing the principle of this compact and the ratification process is still going on. It is completed in your country, it's not in mine. I am not sure whether today the new French president of the republic has officially stated that France would ratify. In the meantime, the markets are again worried and there are various movements on the markets. So it's the first point, the lessons of the crisis. Good news, it's our common interests mean common destiny and I fully agree with what John Brutton was answering to a question earlier. What about the possibility for a member of the eurozone, Greece or somebody else to quit and to come out of the eurozone? It's absurd, it's impossible. We have made the omelette. When the omelette is made, we can't not digest, but we cannot retrieve the eggs. That's the good news, even if it's digestion sometimes, but that's the good news. The bad news is that we don't have the governance system to run this new kind of political entity. We have the Lisbonne Treaty, it's a good treaty, but probably it's not enough. Our working method, our decision making process is clearly too cumbersome, too complicated and too slow. That's why I propose to complement the agreements already reached at the EU level, but by what I call a model of solidarity in the EU, solidarity backed for the EU. There is a fiscal pact, there is now an agreement, I don't know whether they call it a pact or a compact for in favor of growth. My recommendation is to complement by solidarity backed because clearly if there is doubt on the markets and which is at least as important among our citizens, it's a doubt about the capacity of the countries forming the European Union or the Eurozone to show to express their solidarity. And we have been trying for the last two years to invent this model of solidarity. A lot has been done, but now is the time to complement this model. And this solidarity pact should comprise two elements, two arms. Financial solidarity and fiscal solidarity. What does that mean? Financial solidarity, it's the problem we have been discussing since the beginning of the day. My perception of what we are looking for in the setting up of these ESM, the fiscal treaty, your fiscal compact, etc., can be summed up in the motto, one for all and all for one. One for all, what does that mean? We all agree to help one another if need be, but on the condition that everyone makes most efforts to avoid needing the aid of the others. We can agree on helping somebody if before resorting to the help of the others, he endeavors to help himself and to save himself, one for all. And it's the aim of the fiscal compact, of the fiscal treaty. Every member of the Eurozone has to commit solemnly to put his public finance in order so that in the long run he won't need any longer anymore the support of his partner. And in particular, this rule, this gold rule is necessary because, of course it's not the case in Ireland, but in many other countries, including mine, we tend to be very generous with other people's money, particularly with German money, or we are very generous. And there are a lot of proposals, but we are democracies, we are democracies. We can convince some partners, the Germans, the Dutch, the Finns, etc., to be more generous towards the rest of Europe. We can explain and demonstrate, and rightly, that it's their interest, those who export a lot towards us. Our deficits are their surpluses, and conversely, so their interest is that our growth be as high as possible. And so, if we lack money, if they can lend us money, it's their interest, if they can lend. And as long as it is only loans, but we are democracies, they are democracies. We cannot, nobody, no authority, public authority, elected, can obtain from their electors, from their constituents, to pay taxes in place of taxpayers of other countries. I am not, I cannot in France convince my taxpayers to pay the taxes that the Greeks don't pay in their country. It's impossible. So we must understand that we can demand a lot from our partners, but there is a limit, a democratic limit, which is the impossibility to convince the taxpayer of a member state to place in lieu of the taxpayer of another once. But, another one, but it's one for all. And the, in return for this commitment and this efforts, if in spite of these efforts, one country is in a very difficult situation. So, all the others have the obligation to come to help. It is all for one. A lot has been done with the creation of the European Stability Fund. I am very happy to learn, we have been told this morning that last night there was an agreement of principle to make this fund more flexible to empower it to purchase at least a secondary public debt. And to empower it also to intervene directly in the capital of banks in Spain and probably in other countries, including this one. But let's remember this philosophy, this principle, one for all and all for one. Alongside financial solidarity, we need fiscal budgetary solidarity too. And it is the second part of the, what I called the solidarity pact of Europe. What is amusing, what is surprising is that while dealing with this financial crisis and debt crisis, our leaders have forgotten that there is something like a common European budget. And solidarity is a concept different from liberty, equality, fraternity, et cetera. It's not abstraction. It can be assessed, measured very precisely. The amount of solidarity among a family, a city, a region, a country, a union of countries is measured by the level, the amount of the common budget. In a country like France, the solidarity is very high. When a French earns 100 euros, he pays 44 euros of taxes or other contributions, almost half of the income. At the EU level, the EU budget accounts only for one percent of the EU GDP. So it's a very low level of solidarity. That's why we need complement the EU budget by the financial solidarity, the European solidarity, et cetera, or stability fund, et cetera, et cetera. Invent a new model, but of course we must also use this basic instrument of solidarity, which is our common budget. And now is the time, it's an interesting coincidence, to start negotiating on the EU budget for the next seven years. You know that the EU budget is an annual budget, but it is devised and adopted in a multi-annual framework for a period of seven years. And we are now starting negotiating, negotiation between the European Parliament and the European Council of Ministers, European Affairs Ministers and Finance Ministers, for the years 2014-2020. And my recommendation on the EU budget is the following, of course, of course. We need an EU budget higher than today. But we must be realistic, it will be very difficult to reach a political agreement to increase sizably the current level of this budget. We need to reach an agreement unanimity of the 27 member states. So we are at the mercy of the less European-minded member state. Ireland is a very Euro-minded member state, but there are some islands, not very remote from here, which are not in same mood. But at least we should try to adjust the current framework both on the expenditure side and on the revenue side. What does that mean? On the expenditure side, our small EU budget is focused on very important policies, particularly important for your country and mine. But the content of which requires adjustment adaptations. It's the common agriculture policy and what we call the regional or cohesion policy. And on these policies also we must draw the lessons from experience. The situation on the international food markets are changing very rapidly. In a world where Chinese eat no longer rice but meat, including Irish beef, it's a different word from what it used to be 20 years ago. And probably it requires some shifts, some adjustments to the common agriculture policy. Likewise, on the cohesion funds. The cohesion funds are very important economically and politically because it's the instrument whereby the richer member states help the poorer member states to catch up. And it's important particularly for the Mediterranean country and Eastern European country. But the crisis has shown that some of these member states waste the money with some corruption. Other member states don't know how to use it. In Bulgaria or Romania last year they were able to use only 7 or 8% of the funds they were allocated. And in other member states, my country, my region, my constituency, we waste the money into too many projects. Every year in my region, the south-west, Akiten, Bordeaux, the wine. And the Basque country, the territory from Bordeaux to the Spanish border, 3 million inhabitants. We got grants from the European Regional Funds for 2,000 different programs, projects. For too many, for too many, that's clear. Politically it's good for us. We are popular in 2,000 communities. But economically it's not serious. So we have to focus, to use this small EU budget to focus our efforts on more efficient projects and programs preparing the future return to competitiveness and to growth. And alongside CAP and regional policies, of course to fund research, new technologies, renewable sources of energy, etc., which so far has not been funded sufficiently by the EU budget. That's it for the expenditure. And the last point is the revenue side of the budget. And there, we are in a very queer situation. We are violating the treaty. According to the treaty, from the first day of what we call the European construction, the treaty on steel and coal community in 1951 and then treaty of Rome. And until today's treaty of Lisbonne. It is laid down very precisely that the EU expenditure shall be funded by EU own resources. In public policies, own resources mean taxes. Either national taxes, which part of, or all of them directly earmarked for the EU budget, or EU tax. Initially, in 1951, and it was still the case when Ireland joined the then common market, there was a federal tax without the name federal. But there was a tax on the output of the steel and coal companies. And the revenue from this tax was relatively high. But then, the European coal and steel community demised in 2003. And today, the only own resources allocated to the EU budget is the customs duties. And the customs duties, well, in a world where everything circulates freely. Of course, it's not an important revenue. That's why, today, the EU is funded by national contributions, meaning by national budgets. And given the situation of our national budgets, it is of course impossible to increase the funding of EU policies. I cannot ask, I cannot expect from the Irish finance minister. I have met this morning from the Portuguese finance minister, nor from the French finance minister. We are in the same situation to increase their contribution. So my recommendation, my proposal, which is now not a personal proposal, but a formal official proposal of the European Parliament. And of the European Commission, a proposal which is now on the table, which is negotiated in Brussels, negotiation that started a few months ago, is to replace the current national contributions by new own resources. Two different options have been put forward, have been put forward by the European Commission. First, the allocation of one VAT point directly to Brussels, and the second one, the setting up of financial transition tax, the revenue of which, or at least part of the revenue of which could be earmarked to Brussels. If these options do not obtain the required unanimity among the 27 member states. And for instance, I understand that these ideas are not very well accepted here. Ok, we don't mind in parliament the option which is finally accepted. But we need a solution, be it VAT, be it financial transition tax, be it a carbon tax, be it another kind of tax. But it's the only way to be able to finance our common policies necessary to sustain growth and regain competitiveness. While alleviating, narrowing the burden of the national budgets. And, and it will be my last remark, it's also necessary for political reasons, major political reasons. Of course, we know that today Europe, Europe as such, the European construction is not very popular in our countries. It's always the case in the period of crisis that is clear. We know that the idea of proposing a tax, a new tax to fund Europe is not popular. Anywhere, that's clear, that's obvious. But we know also that if we want, come out of the crisis by the top, we need more Europe, more integration, a new step forward in Europe. And of course, according to a democratic process. The current system is half democratic. There is a European parliament elected directly by the citizens. It shares the legislative competence with the council of ministers representing the states. Okay. But the policies decided by this parliament and this council of ministers are not funded according a democratic decision making process. We need also to make this decision making process fully democratic. And that is the, the scheme, the proposal I am making before you to strengthen Europe when we need this, the strengthening in inventing a very original model of solidarity based on financial solidarity and also on fiscal solidarity. Thank you.