Financial experts amongst the PES family gave the 2009 Prague Congress delegates and activistsinsights on the current discussions about the financial crisis and its political repercussions. During the panel discussion the speakers – including Belgian PS leader Elio Di Rupo, MEPs Pervenche Béres from PS France and Udo Bulman from SPD Germany – also endorsed the joint PES/GPF (Global Progressive Forum) campaign, “Europeans for Financial Reform” (EFFR).
The discussion revealed a broad consensus on the fact that regulating finance is a necessary but not sufficient condition to overcome the current crisis. Creating jobs, tackling climate change and paving the way for a progressive European society all require financing. But let us not confuse means and ends. As Pervenche Béres put it, we need to turn the proposition upside down: our best strategy for the financial markets revolve around jobs.
This does not prevent us from thinking about the instruments to re-establish healthy financial markets, markets that are aimed at allocating capital for long-term investment and are able to manage risk, as the President of Socialist International Women, Pia Locatelli, reminded us. The panellists encouraged the implementation of an ‘international transaction tax’, a proposition supported by the whole of the audience, which strongly applauded at the speaker’s proposal. The international transaction tax’ is an instrument that could easily bend down speculation and get the banks to finally pay for their crisis.
In a call for unity and immediate action, Thomas Östros of the Swedish Labour Party told the audience that if today investment bankers are finding ways to pay themselves bonuses even though the crisis is far from over, this means that a new financial bubble is already underway. If nothing is done now, it will burst like the subprime bubble in 2007 – with the consequences we all know.
The EFFR campaign is about avoiding further crises, making finance the servant of society and empowering the people to make the important choices. As Elio Di Rupo said “Finance is so important that we cannot leave it in the hands of the financial world”. Alone, we cannot create changes. But together with the PES and the S&D group at the European Parliament, social democratic parties and activists in Europe can shape the future financial markets.