Bruton: EU needs to explain cutbacks

THE EU needs to explain to the people of Europe in a plain and easily understood manner why the cutbacks being experienced in many economies are necessary and why they will result in better days ahead.

This was the message from the president of the IFSC, John Bruton, at the European Insurance Forum yesterday.

Mr Bruton said European electorates everywhere need to recognise that time will be needed to rectify the deep and unstable imbalances that grew up in our economies since 2000, under the temporary anaesthetic of artificially cheap imports, and artificially low interest rates.

“The EU leadership needs to develop a convincing narrative that explains, in everyday language, why we are doing what we are doing, why it will take time, and how the actions we are taking now will eventually lead to a European economy that is much more secure than the bloated and bogus prosperity that we experienced from 2000 to 2007,” Mr Bruton said.

“Telling a convincing story about the future is a vital part of political leadership, and we need such leadership in the European Union, now more than ever before.”

The former taoiseach said the EU will have to move closer together politically, if we are to survive economically.

“The politics of this is just as important as the economics. People in all EU countries, rich and poor, need to feel a sense of ownership of the European Union,” he said.

He recalled the creation of the EU in the 1950s was a first in world history, a completely voluntary pooling of sovereignty by states that had recently been at war with one another.

“It was an outstanding example of political engineering, as well as of visionary imagination.

“EU’s leaders today need to apply the same combination of imagination and practical political engineering to developing communal feeling among the member states of the euro, and to sustaining its democratic legitimacy of the euro, as they are giving to its economic underpinning,” he said.

Mr Bruton said this is only the first crisis we will have. “There will be many more. We need political institutions in the EU that are strong enough, democratic enough, decisive enough, and inclusive enough, to face anything the future may throw at them.

“That is the enduring lesson we must take away from this crisis,” he said.