where greece was at. it's a long tradition. perhaps it is difficult for the greeks to be transparent. it's not their tradition. they were not bothered. they didn't wish perhaps to be transparent. and all of the sudden, of course we expect that you show us everything. we want to find out everything, and you don't have the structure for it. number two, second reason, the job market in greece in some places is very narrow. there are many professions that are reserved, that are closed. as a normal citizen, you have no access to these jobs. they are granted among people who have them already. and what i regret in part is that the people who already have a job do everything to protect

it. but we know from experience that only a full opening of the job market will bring more chances. so we have to work with greece so that one of the objectives among everybody is that the greeks themselves open up. because if it is imposed from the outside, the greeks will resent it, of course. and we have not reached that point. we can help, but we will not impose anything. but i do not believe that things are going well for the greek people. the situation is extremely difficult right now for them. but in the end, you cannot go without the reforms.

you can't avoid them. there is no other way. and i hope that together we'll have a nice future. we do not want particularly to make life more difficult for people. we have no interest in that. we're not interested in making your life hard. but we have to come to a point where with the european help and a few changes, we come to a situation where greek can live on its own. and that greece has a lot more chances than today. >> reporter: and if greece decided to step out of the euro, would that be a disaster? >> translator: greece, as far as

i know, has not decided to leave the euro. and i don't want greece to leave the euro. therefore the question does not exist. anyway. i can't give you any political answer because it's not in the order of the day, as i said. the euro is not an economic project, it's a political project. i would never do anything to push greece out of the euro. that would have unexpected consequences. >> translator: this whole question of integration of more europe, don't you think there might be a conflict with democracy? is it still possible to remain democratic in europe? i have a question here on

credibility of this whole european construction. where does it come from? where do you come from? >> translator: i come from munich. >> translator: i hope head was british. i was expecting a second british question. >> translator: no, it's a basic question. it's fundamental. >> translator: no, go ahead. >> translator: according to you, do you think in europe there is a democratic deficit? do you think that we could turn towards less conventional form of democracy?

don't you think that the people could be more active, because we don't have the legitimacy, we don't have the political training that makes politics today legitimate? >> translator: yes. in the lisbon treaty, i think, there is the possibility of sending petitions to europe. you could create a mass movement or give an ideal or gave an idea, and you can give to it the european parliament if you have enough signatures. in my party, in the city we said that perhaps we should have direct election of the commission president so that he would be more identified with the voters. but i think that we have a much simpler task. the european parliament has become extremely powerful.

bury the mps in europe do not realize how powerful they are. they don't feel powerful. it's very interesting to watch. the mep in the party in europe represent totally different positions than the positions they defend in their home parliament. and the american president asked me, he said what happens in the european parliament? because they take decisions that are completely different from the decisions taken by the german parliament or the french parliament. and for instance in germany, we have very tight links between the parliaments of the lender

and the federal parliament. they defend the same position. for instance, in my party, all the representatives of my party are against euro bonds, and it's the same in the lender. but it's not the case in the european parliament. that's why there is no identification between the members of parliament, of the european parliament and the voters. i go to the european council a lot, so i know what is going on in europe. but the parliamentarian in germany, he goes to the bundestag, and then he goes back

to his constituency, and he is less aware of the european level. and so i think that we should have much tighter links between the european parliament and the national parliament. we already have meetings of the speakers of the different parliaments. but we should go much deeper. we should go much wider into that. but you will see there are huge differences between parliaments. in germany you have to go through two houses in order to do something like this. in france it goes much faster. you would hit a lot of restrictions. the brookings institution this afternoon will look at how that treaty is being implemented. a discussion gets under way at 1:00 p.m. eastern and you can see it live on our companion network spon spon2. this is c-span3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every

weekend, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs on our website. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. mayor yes multibecame prime minister of italy this past november. he never held political office before. he agreed to stay on for two years to implement austerity measures. the italian prime minister was in washington earlier this week and at the peterson institute for international economics, he talked about europe's economy and sovereign debt. >> i think it's fair to say that a simple sets the stanl for today's meeting. the future of the world economy depends critically on the outcome of the euro crisis.

the joult cooutcome of the euro depends very much on italy. and the outcome in italy will turn decisively on the success of the new italian government led by prime minister molty in overcoming the financial difficulties and in setting the prospect for sustainable economic growth over the longer run. i don't want to put too much pressure on our speaker by putting it that way. but he and everybody else knows that he, his government, and his policies are truly critical to italy, europe, and the global economic outlook. and i believe it's also fair to

say that no one could be in a better position to respond constructively and successfully to those challenges than prime minister mario monti. as european union commissioner for competition policy, we all remember how he displayed enormous and repeated rounds of courage. he took on jack welch and ge. he took on bill gates and microsoft. he took on our good friend who hasn't yet arrived, sergio marci number i who co-chairs the counsel on united states and i willy to which mario spoke many times with whom we partner here and delighted to work so closely. i think it's also fair to say that as eu commissioner, particularly in his period for

competition policy, he forcefully displayed his economic competition as a response and solution to underlying economic and particularly growth difficulties. and we all know that's what italy as a nation and europe as a region now needs more than anything else. and so, again, mario monti is the ideal leader. in addition to all his enormous professional accomplishments, mario has been a great friend of our peterson institute and think tanks more broadly. he has been a member of our board of directors for six years. he was the founding chairman of our partner and close friend, institute in brussels. and he's its only person, he may not know this, he's its only person ever to have delivered the two big annual lectures that we have in lecture series here

at the institute. and whether he gave the second of those in 2006, his title was does europe have an economic future? his response was an unequivocal yes, but, he cautioned, only if europe did several important things to keep its forward momentum toward integration going. and he stressed in particular the need for structural economic reform. now prime minister monte is in the most important position possible to make that happen. it's, therefore, a truly great honor, privilege and personal joy to host the prime minister and to introduce him to this distinguished audience. super mario?

>> thank you very much, fred. it's really very touching and emotionally heavy for me to be here with so many friends and so the synergisms about the crisis of italy, europe, et cetera, et cetera. i didn't quite realize how tall an order fred would have been able to put in front of me. i really want to underline how

we all involved in policy observing, policy making have been benefiting from the peterson institute work and by -- and from fred's leadership in this and also in other broader context. so i think there could be no better place for me to share with a high lly qualified audiee on this time. the economic future of italy and europe. as fred mentioned, yes, i delivered a few words in 2006 on the topic does europe have an economic future? and after all, europe did have an economic future. but i think that many of the questions surrounding europe

then are still there today. and, of course, i feel the responsibility in my temporary and luckily enough sharply timed to give a contribution to the solution of those problems. everybody has in mind, of course, theure j ureuro zone cr. i think everybody should be aware and i think everybody in this room is aware but not everybody in this country or in italy or in europe is aware of the fact that this has not been a crisis of the euro. the euro has continued to display very, very remarkable stability, solidity. it has not incurred on any of the two situations in which a

currency shows its weakness in terms of the domestic purchasing power and in terms of external -- in term of exchange rates. so i think it is a really remarkable that although there has been and partly there still is a banking and financial and fiscal crisis in many states of the euro zone, the euro has not been affected. i think this says a lot about the structure, institutional and policy resilience of this very, very junior currency in terms of the global arena. now just in the last few hours, we understand that substantial progress has been achieved in greece in order to overcome the worst moments of the crisis.

and the relevant bodies will decide on this. let me just step back for a moment. the greece case was, of course, the most severe and extreme and limit case than one might have imagined for the euro zone. and although we can easily point to the fact that match of what was set out for greece as program in term of budgetary consolidation, in terms of structure reforms and so on. many have come to too late. many have come in insufficient doses relative to their requirements. i think one day even the greek

case will be seen to be a proof of the value of introducing throughout europe, the culture of stability that invented in germany and post war germany has been through the euro, through the budget airy constraints surrounding the euro has been spreading throughout europe. certainly, a country like italy has benefited enormously in the mid and late 90s from the pressures to get into the euro that have brought very, very important structure reforms at that time already. and the most recent economic and political experience in italy of

which for strange reasons i happen to be one of the components today would not have been there if it had not been for the continuing pressures exercised by the framework of eu policy making. and if i were a german citizen, i would be proud even looking at greece of the fact that the most successful of all heavy engineering products of germany, the euro, through the distribution through europe has brought the principles of budgetary discipline, market economy and all that to even the most peripheral and culturally

less prone, least prone part of europe. i think trance formations in other times that require, i don't know, a generation are now being put in place. i hope -- i hope in a nonreversible way. but this remains to be seen in just a couple of years. of course the monetary union was there in the construction. but a jigsaw where some key pieces were missing when i last was here to deliver a few reflections in 2006. as we know, it was both an economic and political project

that was meant to complete the think i said on that evening here the euro is meant to be the cherry on the cake of the single market. but many of the problems were coming from the fact that the cherry had been put in that position but the cake was not yet completely there given the still very imperfect stage of european real economic integration. now, the institutional framework of the economic and monetary union is being reset to tackle the flows in its design and operation that the crisis brought to the light. most crucially, tools to resolve the crisis have been established within the european financial stability fund, sorry, with the european financial stability funneled and the future permanent european stability

mechanism. can i interject the notion that one of the main problems brought about by the euro crisis has been the resumption of old stereotypes about allegedly inherent and unchangeable characters of different people, sometimes constructed on the mere basis of the latitude of their countries. and, of course, it was the two originating forces of the stability and growth pact for germany and france which broke down its credible 2003.

provided a complicity in all of this because it was italy in the chair of the council that allowed the two large member states to break the rules. and after all, it took from 2004 to 2012 to rebuild again a credible pact. and, of course, that was made even more difficult by the fiscal indiscipline in the meantime intervened, particularly in some southern countries. but traveling on the wide open road created by the nonacceptance of the rules by germany and france in 2003. so we all have a responsibility

to build a better european integration and many if not all also have to share in the responsibility of having not always operated in the right direction. so i think european integration can be built all the better, the more we are all modest in assessing our performance relative to that of the other. the principles of budgetary discipline will shortly be enshrined in national constitutions and the all member states committed to be near a balanced budget by 2015. so far, the main focus has been, i think, intends to be on austerity and fiscal consolidation. yet, structure reforms are as

important as fiscal discipline for the long term future of europe. and fiscal discipline rules and the commitment to sound public finances can help european member states overcome the blocking powers of lobbies and special interests. these vetos hamper reform in the past and led to national abuse of the imperfections institutional framework of the economic and monetary union. but fiscal adjustment is not sufficient, definitely, and the interesting current stage of the policy game in europe is precisely on how to put to rest the concentration of minds and

policy energies on fiscal discipline. putting them to rest not because fiscal discipline will not have to be observed, but because by now it has been really set in very, very sophisticated constitutional framework both at the eu and at the national level and all the enforcement instruments are there and all the political will to comply with them is there. so this is very interesting moment for all of us to concentrate more on the growth imperatives.

i think most of the extra growth has to come by coordinated mack crow economic policies at the g-8, g-20 level. but as far as the eu is concerned, mainly it will have to come from structure reforms or supply side measures within europe. we have to make the cake more optimum to the currency we see in the textbooks, otherwise, the euro will never be -- although a solid currency, will never deliver the potential in terms of economic growth and well-being.

the backlash against integration, the integration fatigue that has been observed in many eu countries has put more and more in question the objective, the single. we are seeing concerns in france concerning an army of polish plumbers that apparently were ready to come to france and we've seen in many countries increasing resistances towards cross border takeover bids. and we have seen in many, many