Daniel Hannan: EU Stimulating Growth With Private Jets

Daniel Hannan, member of the European Parliament, talks about EU's failed policies of stimulating growth and wasteful spending. January 16^th, 2013, European Parliament, Strasbourg.

video source from DanielHannanMEP YouTube channel

(see video at the bottom of transcript)

transcript:

Thank you mister Deputy Speaker. Well we are talking about stimulus, and promoting growth, and cohesion. Let me read you the latest on employment figures for youth unemployment. France: 27%. Ireland: 30%. Portugal: 39%. Spain: 57%. Greece: 58%. This is the reality of what's happening outside these chambers, while we congratulate ourselves on all of the stimulus packages which we are decreeing.

There was an almost perfect symbolism when it emerged that in the last mandate the president of the Commission and the president of the European Council had flown to the same summit in Russia in two separate private jets. There is if you like, in microcosm, the EU's approach to job creation. I mean, why have just one private jet, when you can stimulate the economy twice as much by having two private jets. Why have just one bureaucracy, when can have twice as many regulations by having two parallel bureaucracies. Why indeed stop at having just the eurocrats, when you can have an army of consultants, and contractors, and other rent seekers stimulating the economy around them.

The truth colleagues is that the money has run out in the private sector, because of our policies. And since that's the money that is paying all of us, there ought to come a moment when it starts to worry you too.