Margarida Marques is a PS MEP and member of the Socialists and Democrats Group (S&D). Born in Bombarral, in February 1954. She holds a degree in statistical mathematics from the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon and a master’s degree in Educational Sciences from the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
In his CV he has a long experience in public positions, but it is in European affairs that he has stood out the most. She was Head of the European Commission Representation in Portugal between 2005 and 2011 and Secretary of State for European Affairs in the first government of António Costa, between the end of 2015 and mid-2017. She has been a Member of the European Parliament (EP) since 2019.
This interview took place on February 17, the day after the approval of a document, of which she was the rapporteur, by the S&D group, which calls for greater clarity and scrutiny from the European Central Bank (ECB) in the measures it is adopting. concludes the 343 million people living in the eurozone.
“The number of households that have seen their income fall and are no longer able to pay their mortgages is alarming. We need more coordination between ECB policy and fiscal policy,” said Margarida Marques in the debate with President Christine Lagarde of the ECB in Strasbourg.
Next Thursday (March 16), at the monetary policy meeting, Lagarde will return to the charge of inflation and should raise rates again.
In plenary, the European Parliament unveiled an assessment of the ECB’s activities in 2022, the year when inflation soared, and on the basis of that work passed a resolution, of which it was rapporteur, calling on the ECB to take several asks things. More transparency, more communication and coordination with the EP and more political control. Is the ECB still too opaque? To whom do you owe more clarity? To politicians, citizens, banks?
It is a tradition of the Economics Committee of the European Parliament to conduct an annual analysis of the ECB’s activities. We did that and we adopted our report. I was rapporteur for the S&D, with chief rapporteur Rasmus Andresen from the German Greens. This report has several dimensions, one of which, of course, has to do with the ECB’s response to this crisis and the crisis of the war against Ukraine. And our main criticism of the central bank is that while there was a coordinated response between monetary policy and fiscal policy in the covid crisis, there was a lack of coordination in this crisis that started in 2022.
Can you give an example of this lack of coordination?
There is action on the monetary side, and therefore on the rate hike, but there is a lack of action on the fiscal policy side, on the side of initiatives that may exist at the level of the European Union and Member States to to mitigate this it is made. For example, the initiatives taken by the Portuguese government in the field of housing are particularly important. This package is precisely trying to mitigate the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Source: DN
