Elmar Brok, a Member of the European Parliament from Germany, stopped by the New Europe NETV booth at the European People’s Party convention in Warsaw, Poland last week to discuss the party’s agenda. Long an active voice in the party, he had a lot of opinions on its role before the upcoming EU elections in June.

This is a critical time for the party, facing assault from the Socialists, blame for the economic crisis, about everything. How can you come back from the perception they try to put on the party as being to blame for this problem?

-First of all, these financial crises did not start in Europe, but it started in United States so we cannot be responsible for that. And secondly, the German Chancellor, a Christian Democrat, has proposed already three years ago controlling hedge funds, controlling financial markets at the European and global level, but it was rejected by Gordon Brown, who is a Socialist, chief of the Labour Party, who did not allow that we could have such a solution at the European level.So, there is no reason to be blamed, the Socialists should look down into their homes.

The European Commission has now pushed hedge funds to set regulations, yesterday hedge fund managers said that would drive the businesses of hedge funds out of Europe. Is that too much regulation? I think what we need is worldwide regulation, and therefore it is important that all these controlling mechanisms will be done as it was decided in the G20 meeting in London on April2. Therefore we need the same mechanism of controls regulations and so on, on the global level, the market is global the relations must be global, that was the purpose of the G20 meeting.

Do you think that Germany set the right tone by rejecting President’s Obama call for further stimuli packages in the EU and Germany?

I think so, because first of all it is important to set up such regulation, that such things cannot happen anymore, that is the real point, to get the confidence back to the markets. Stimulus packages are only a way to solve the symptoms of the crisis, but not the crisis itself.

Yes, because panic is like power. It’s just perceived, if you think it’s there then it is, isn’t it?

Yes, but I think it has more credibility if we find regulations which would avoid such as situations in future. That is the number of our priority but also all Europeans here in Germany have done a lot in stimulus packages for instance in Germany alone more than hundred billion dollars.

Curiously, people point to the EPP as perhaps being too dominant in the European Parliament, and stifling real debate there. Is there a dangerous in one party having such hegemony in a body like that?

I think that we are a strong group, but we don’t have the overall majority. We need coalitions. I think that Europe has done very well with EPP majority and if you would not have EPP member like Helmut Gould in Europe among others, the member who introduced the Euro, then people will be in other situation, with solidarity. It kept people together, Europe was able to speak with one voice at the G20.