Antonio Lopez-Isturiz, the Secretary General of the European People’s Party, stopped by the New Europe NETV television booth in Warsaw, Poland last week during the EPP Congress there to talk about the platform the party was building before the June EU elections and the politics of the opposition. Here is what he had to say:

Mr. Secretary General, these are tough times for the Party, because you’re facing criticism that during your reign we’ve had the worst economic crisis. It’s not your fault; it’s a world problem, but the Socialists are laying it at your door step.

-I believe that the problem that we have inherited is from the 60 years of Socialism in Europe and also many years of the socialdemocrat system that we lived in Europe. The crisis started, the financial problem started in the United States, when problems in the financial system are aroused. But also Europe could not resist this crisis, because the system was the ancient system that we inherited from people like Francois Mitterrand, Willy Brandt and all these. So, I mean we instead of speaking about this, you will see during the Congress what are we doing instead of attacking this, like the Socialists are doing, wasting time on this, we are speaking about solutions.
What we want to do.

What do you want to do?

We want to emphasise in the social market economy. And as I said, (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel will say responsible social market economy. To make viewers understand this, this is like a football game, you have two teams competing each other. This is the market economy, this is the free market economy and then you have a referee that controls that there is a fair play. That the game is playing with rules, to have the rules clear for all the participants. This is social market economy. And of course the benefits of all these have to be for creating prosperity but also to support social system in our countries

It’s a game and it’s not over yet