Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Commissioner and his team. I want to explore the area of the European semester and economic governance. I will explain where I am coming from. I was in the European Parliament from 2011 to 2014 when some of these measures were introduced, including the six pack, the two pack, austerity, and the fiscal treaty. What we saw was an example of the shock doctrine of using a crisis of capitalism to enshrine some of the neoliberal laws in European law and to reduce democracy at a European and national level. That is the effect of those laws. What democratic legitimacy does the Commission have to be engaged in instructing, directing or recommending governments to implement certain budgetary decisions? In the Commission's engagement with Italy, it stressed that the adoption of the 2018 budget with no watering down of its key provisions would be crucial. It underlined the importance of sticking to the important structural reforms, notably as regards pensions. What democratic legitimacy does the Commission have to be demanding so-called structural reforms from democratically elected governments?