Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-06-Speech-4-397"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20000706.15.4-397"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, Mrs Lambert and Mrs Ghilardotti are right. The European social NGOs are playing a critical role in our work. Anyone who went through the Article 13 discrimination package could see this. Since the 1998 budget crisis which saw the freezing of funds destined for NGO work with some of the most vulnerable people in Europe and the developing world, much progress has been made. The Portuguese presidency broke new ground and invited the European aid platform to the Lisbon informal social affairs summit and the French presidency is following suit. These kinds of initiatives were recognised in the conclusions of the Lisbon summit.
But words are not enough and two years after the 1998 budget crisis, the difficulties continue. There have been two years of consultations with NGOs and all the Commission has come up with is a discussion paper and two internal working groups which have hardly met. Meanwhile NGOs, and I worked in the NGO field, are being squeezed by bureaucratic rules which were introduced to promote accountability and transparency but which in the end have created more red tape.
The troubles of NGOs Mr President are further compounded by this House when it makes difficult rules on co-finance requirements which are set with the tightest deadlines. The one budget line that we had – B3-4101 has been scrapped and the Commission has failed to come up with a proposal for a legal base for the civil dialogue either through suggesting a Council regulation or a Treaty article. Worse, the social NGOs have been told by the Commission that they will need to be funded through our new discrimination and social exclusion budget lines. How can that be when the funds for those programmes have been reduced beyond what is reasonable?
A number of valuable social NGOs are facing serious crises because of the inaction of the Commission and the Council. I saw one NGO which made an application for projects requiring eighty pages of budget sheets and so many supporting papers that one NGO application weighed over twelve kilos.
Mr President, that has to change. NGOs are critical to our work and we must support them."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples