Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-29-Speech-3-163"

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"en.20000329.9.3-163"2
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"Mr President, we cannot give our assent to the general economic rationale of the resolution on the budget guidelines for the 2001 budgetary procedure as it now stands. Indeed, we would protest against the veritable misappropriation of funds which is proposed: the inappropriate use of resources reserved for agricultural expenditure under Category I of the financial perspective as a source of funding to be used to meet funding requirements in the sphere of foreign policy. We find this attempt to fund the reconstruction of Kosovo at the expense of European farmers, and to convince us that there is no budgetary solution other than this outrageous deception, absolutely iniquitous. Quite the contrary, we should maintain expenditure on agriculture, the compulsory expenditure, and moderate expenditure under other categories, where there are unquestionable margins. We must therefore reject annual funding of the EUR 5.5 billion intended for the Balkans, an amount calculated by the European Commission on who knows what basis, by raising the ceiling for external expenditure and lowering that under the agricultural categories, on the erroneous grounds that appropriations would not be taken away from agriculture but that it would be appropriate to release the margins for 2001 and 2002. Well, we are all aware that the mid-term review planned by the Berlin Summit is due to take place in 2003. When this occurs, there is no doubt that if the dubious practice proposed by the Commission, and forcefully denounced by our Group, is endorsed by Parliament, it will then be claimed by many as an acquired right. It therefore constitutes an extremely dangerous precedent as far as our farmers are concerned. This, moreover, is the message clearly expressed by the European Council in Lisbon, whose conclusions unequivocally refused to incorporate the Commission’s wish to reduce the agricultural budget by EUR 300 million in 2001, and by the same again in 2002. Regardless of the background, we do not accept the challenging of the conclusions of the Berlin Summit represented by this continual demand for the financial perspective and the various categories to be revised. We accept it still less in light of the fact that the calculations for the European Commission’s ambitious Balkans programme lack both discipline and precision, that the Union’s existing appropriations for Kosovo cannot be spent in full and that other donor states are not meeting their financial commitments. So I repeat, Mr President, there are no grounds for the call for the revision of the financial perspective. We therefore reject it."@en1

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