Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-02-15-Speech-2-098"
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"en.20000215.5.2-098"2
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"The McCarthy report on the URBAN Community Initiative gives us an opportunity to reflect on the appropriateness of Community intervention in urban matters. The situation of certain urban areas is alarming, with the social distress taking the form of unemployment, misery and crime. Drug dealing in particular fuels insecurity and delinquency.
Faced with these social challenges, the effectiveness of the Structural Funds is still in doubt. Subsidiarity should make us realise that the state, exercising its governing functions, and local authorities are the bodies most able to intervene appropriately. The state can ensure public safety and the local authorities can help disadvantaged people. Although we welcome the determination to create a system of exchanges between successful enterprises, the problems specific to each urban area cannot be dealt with in the same way.
The URBAN Community Initiative is helping to achieve the European Union’s desire to communitise urban policy. It would be more appropriate for the EU to concentrate its financial efforts on pre-existing European policies. Clearly some people are profiting from the opportunity to indulge in another budget bidding race which is particularly mistimed when the convergence criteria for EMU are imposing a very strict slimming regime on the national budgets. Mrs McCarthy is therefore suggesting an increase in the funds allocated to URBAN and the promotion of this Community initiative through a costly communication campaign extolling the benefits of a federal Europe. We should remember that the effectiveness of expenditure is not measured by the volume of funding allocated to the project. In fact, the beneficiaries of too many and too high subsidies will eventually just take these for granted. The aim must not be to help the people but to make them take responsibility.
Finally, the report specifically highlights actions in favour of ethnic or sociological minorities. We can only condemn a policy on minorities which is inevitably dangerous for social cohesion. On one hand, this policy encourages the integration of immigrants where it should favour their assimilation into the culture of the host country. This would prevent the development of ethnic ghettos which are nothing more than urban powder kegs. On the other hand, it manipulates the principle of positive discrimination. This is a politically correct fancy which can be just as harmful, as shown by the US precedent.
For all these reasons, the French delegation of the UEN Group could not approve the McCarthy report."@en1
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