Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-06-Speech-4-395"
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"en.20000706.15.4-395"2
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"Mr President, in the last few years the EU has, of course, been given more and more significant powers in the social area, but it has not been given an awful lot of money for solving social problems. As long as the Member States are of the basic opinion that social issues should be dealt with by the Member States themselves, there will be no rapid change. We are, of course, aware that those funds which do exist are strictly budgeted for and that it is difficult to move funds around within the budget. It is difficult to meet new needs while the Member States have this attitude.
For these reasons, I believe that it is particularly important for those of us who work in the EU institutions to concentrate on according much greater importance than we have until now to the non-governmental public organisations in Europe operating in the social sphere. I am sure everyone can see that there is a need for transnational activities in the social sphere, too. There is, therefore, a place for non-governmental organisations. It would, however, be unfortunate, and that is perhaps the way the Member States see it, if the non-governmental social organisations were to be strongly bound, financially and politically, to the EU – more so than they are already becoming. Their worth lies precisely in the fact that they are non-governmental and civic and are able to see social problems from a different perspective than the authorities. In that way, they constitute a complement or alternative to the Commission, the Council and Parliament.
I will take the opportunity to make a suggestion, despite there not being many people listening (there are only around six MEPs in the House). I propose that the Commission try to set up a European fund for this purpose with the non-governmental organisations in the social sphere. I propose that the Commission turn to the Council and the Member States to try to get them to contribute to such a fund. This fund ought to be set up as an independent institution whose board of directors is made up of people from the social organisations themselves, together with researchers and experts in the social sphere.
One might imagine that such an organisation would escape some of the bureaucratic problems. Financial supervision could be exercised by professional auditors.
I believe that if we set to work on a task like this with a certain diplomatic tactfulness, the Member States would react positively to the proposal. I also believe that all other parties – the socially disadvantaged, the non-governmental organisations, the Member States and the EU institutions – would all be very pleased with such an institution."@en1
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