Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-04-Speech-2-174"
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"en.20000704.8.2-174"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as the rapporteur explained, today’s debate is by way of preparation for the Council’s first reading of the 2001 Budget on 20 July, mainly so as to be able to discuss in detail the votes on compulsory expenditure, i.e. agricultural market expenditure, fisheries expenditure, the fisheries agreements and the draft for the external and security policy expenditure. Consequently, we have the opportunity this week, to set the appropriate course for the trialogue.
I would like briefly to go into the issue of the fisheries agreements. We will certainly have an unusual situation to contend with in 2001, given that numerous agreements are due to be renegotiated or extended, even though it is not yet clear as to when the agreements will be re-concluded and at what cost. This could easily lead to a shortfall in the appropriations provided, although I believe there is in fact support for the Commission’s proposal not to provide too low a level of appropriations here. The Commission will submit its new estimate of the necessary expenditure in October, whereupon it will be possible to plan more precisely for this sector than is perhaps the case at present.
Speakers have mentioned in the course of their interventions that there are serious differences of opinion, particularly where the revision of the financial perspective is concerned. On behalf of the Commission, I can only repeat once again that as far as we are concerned, our mission in the Balkans – which could not be taken account of in last year’s financial planning – is so important that we are right to make an adjustment. That really is not to say that we should decide to amend the financial perspective every time there is a fresh requirement, only that the Commission believes we are justified in doing so when important new tasks crop up.
There is another point I would like to make on behalf of the Commission, and it concerns the field of external policy. We have proposed that EUR 30 million be earmarked in the 2001 Budget for the Rapid Reaction Fund, which is used for non-military crisis prevention. The Council has proposed that the fund should take a cut of EUR 10 million and that the appropriations for CFSP should be increased by 10 million in return. It is the Commission’s belief that we ought not to weaken this new instrument of non-military crisis management, i.e. the Rapid Reaction Fund, from the outset.
I have this to say about Mrs Haug’s report: you have issued another reminder that the Commission must also come up with the documents it has promised in respect of the administration of the external policy, under the heading ‘externalisation’. I would again point out that we are working very hard on finding a solution that will centralise control over the project cycle in the future, mainly – and this is a major area of concern to me personally – so as to reduce the amount of time between the moment we engage in overseas commitments and the point at which funds are ultimately released.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the rapporteur and the Committee on Budgets. I hope we may be able to use the next few weeks to find more common ground than differences of opinion, so as to be able to get off to a good start with the budgetary negotiations.
The trialogue will probably major on the general growth rates for the 2001 Budget as compared with the 2000 financial year. To reiterate the point once again, the Commission proposal provides for an increase of 5% in the payment appropriations, and an increase of 3.9% in the commitment appropriations. It was not easy to achieve this outcome because the additional requirements for the Stability Pact had to be accommodated and Agenda 2000 involved adopting a very high growth rate in respect of agricultural policy.
The Council made the proposal in its preliminary preparations in the Budget Committee that a growth rate of only 3.5% in respect of payment appropriations and 2.8% in respect of commitment appropriations be provided for, and of course it would only be possible to sustain a drop of that magnitude, given the high proportion of expenditure on agriculture, if we were to make larger cutbacks under the agriculture heading than the Commission has proposed. I am really quite amazed that the Council’s Budget Committee has already proposed more far-reaching savings in the agricultural sector than the Commission, notably to the tune of half a billion euros.
This beggars belief given the debates that have taken place in the public arena on the Commission proposal, but of course the question remains as to how willing people are to say that savings of this kind can be employed in other areas. A case in point is that of the question mark over external policy aid. This is where the Council, unlike the Commission, is proposing a reduced package of EUR 400 million in commitment appropriations. The Commission considers this proposal to be lacking in the necessary political foresight, in view of the tasks we have before us on the external policy front.
Naturally the Commission welcomes Parliament’s support in respect of the Balkans policy, and I would like to thank you for this, and especially for having this debate, which I believe has afforded some crucial insights. The Council says that the Balkans policy is a high priority, but it is has still made an inadequate financing proposal in my view. The Commission has pointed out that aid for Bosnia is being cut, for example, and that Albania and Montenegro have not exactly been generously provided for in terms of appropriations, on the contrary, only one commitment is being honoured in our view. We must also be sure to provide the necessary funding for the commitments we have in Kosovo – which, thankfully, are now being administered effectively owing to the reconstruction agency – so as to be able to pursue a successful policy here, because this area, more than any other, is a touchstone for the European Union’s common foreign policy."@en1
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