Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-26-Speech-2-038"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.19991026.2.2-038"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I would first like to congratulate the rapporteur and, with a great deal of respect for the work he has done, thank him very sincerely for this draft budget which is courageous and innovative in many aspects. The rapporteur is to be praised for having achieved it by means of a budgetary procedure which has run its course with the utmost smoothness, even if Parliament is in the process of issuing a major challenge to the Council – a challenge which, in my opinion, is worth accepting. I am referring, obviously, to the Financial Perspective and the need for Europe to prove itself worthy of the role it wishes to play in the world, without making an over-complicated issue of the budget of the Union.
In 1999 we had a budget – I say this to the ladies and gentlemen of the Council in particular, I am reminding you of this because it is a matter which affects us all – in 1999, Commissioner, we had a budget of EUR 96 billion. This year, a milestone year, what with the war in Kosovo, the events in East Timor, the earthquakes in Turkey and the commitments of a Union that wishes to take on more responsibility in the international arena, the Council is proposing a budget of EUR 92 billion, that is, EUR 4 billion less than the budget for the previous year.
The Edinburgh perspectives set us an ever higher ceiling and the Council gives us an ever more limited budget, meaning that it will be necessary to cut back on actions in the field of development, for example, or human rights and many other actions, in order to finance the priorities which have been set, and it is not our fault if Europe is the great paymaster of foreign policy. We shall be responsible for the payments, while other people are responsible for the policy, and I hope that this is going to change.
Parliament will therefore do well, on Thursday, to ask you to go beyond these Financial Perspective. Do we wish to finance reconstruction in Kosovo? Fine. Do we wish to assist the integration of Turkey, including by subsidising its immediate dramatic needs? Do we have a new nation emerging into the international arena after all these massacres which have taken place? Then, let us finance these policies, for heaven’s sake. We have an interinstitutional agreement that allows us, if exceptional events require, to go beyond the Financial Perspective, so why not do it? That would be EUR 1.5 billion more. It will still be less than the 1999 budget, but I think that the citizens of Europe will clearly see that this endeavour is not only logical, but also perfectly feasible at the level of the budgets of our Member States. We would therefore do well to proceed in this way and I think that Parliament should follow through and, if necessary, demand that we have recourse to the former Article 203 of the budget.
A brief word on TAOs. There too I think we are demonstrating great pragmatism. I thank the rapporteur very much. We have an interim solution which, I think, will enable us, by means of dialogue with the Commission, to find an agreement on a definitive solution. I am pointing out this pragmatic aspect of our report for the year 2000 and I would compare it to policies which were rather more extremist in which a clean sweep was made of mini-budgets and then one found oneself with one or two thousand TAOs which could not be managed because the project had been axed in the meantime without any thought as to the consequences.
So, I congratulate the rapporteur. As regards political parties, may I say that, frankly, asking the Commission to lay down the status of political parties – I am referring to the contribution of the last speaker – is neither fair nor worthy."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples