Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-131"
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"en.20001024.5.2-131"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I would also have been delighted to welcome our Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen. Budgetary discussions are nearly always guided by the principle that money is not everything, but without money, all is nothing. It is marvellous to have you with us Commissioner.
We have therefore earmarked almost EUR 120 million for two budgetary lines combined. If you now take a look at the lines covering labour market measures and local employment initiatives, you will see that a total of almost EUR 150 million has been made available for job creation measures under heading 3. That, to my mind, sends out a clear signal.
Clearly, we also want to help with the reform of the Commission, and provide support where this has an impact on the staffing situation. We accept that 400 new posts need to be created, but would attach certain conditions to this. We expect the Commission to set out, before the second reading, how it intends to implement the Budget more efficiently. We expect it to explain to us what steps it will take to ensure that Parliament receives better information more quickly, and is kept up-to-date on the implementation of the reform package. We expect it to step up the efforts it is making to bring the legislative process more into line with the budgetary process.
In addition, naturally we take the view that it would not be acceptable simply to create 400 additional jobs, i.e. on top of those already in existence. Therefore we welcome with open arms the fact that early retirement arrangements have been put in place as part of the reform process.
Quite often, the drafting of the Budget is seen as a methodical way of establishing the sad fact that we cannot get by on our revenue. I believe that is what many of us – i.e. many of you – think when you consider heading 4 of the budget. After all, we are very poorly provided for when it comes to financing our external policy. For more than a year now, Parliament has been urging the Council to work with it on negotiating stable and secure reconstruction aid for the Balkans. The Council has persistently refused to do so.
The people of the Balkans have repeatedly been promised aid by the various Council Summit Meetings. However, back home, the Council shirks from countersigning the promised cheque. In other contexts, people would say they had been ‘duped’. In drawing up its preliminary draft budget in June, not only did the Commission endeavour to secure the financing for the Balkans aid, it also tried not to cut back on the other areas of external policy too heavily. That is precisely when it did the logical thing and proposed the revision of heading 4.
But not only did the Council refuse to negotiate with us over a possible revision of this kind, it even went so far, at its first reading, as to reduce the funding for the Balkans, MEDA and TACIS by EUR 200 million, EUR 150 million, and EUR 20 million respectively. And I have only mentioned the worst of the cuts at that. This is completely unacceptable! Parliament will abide by its traditional priorities. We will make appropriate sums available for those of our budgetary lines concerned with democracy and human rights, cooperation with non-governmental organisations working in the interests of the poorest countries, our cooperation with Latin America, South Africa and Asia. We will adopt the Council’s proposed level of funding for MEDA, and would urge the Council to join us in using the flexibility instrument, should it become apparent in the course of next year that MEDA requires more money.
But let us return to the Balkans. Our margin will allow us to pitch the level of reconstruction aid EUR 50 million higher than the figure decided by the Council. Add to this our carry-over from Budget 2000 to Budget 2001 under the Notenboom procedure and we will have the amount that the Commission deems appropriate.
Following the happy outcome of the elections in Serbia, we are, however, now obliged to support Serbia with financial aid and not just with fine words and grand proclamations. Parliament’s preferred approach is twofold. We have created a new budgetary line entitled ‘democratisation’. EUR 60 million have been set aside for this purpose, which is money our Budget can easily spare. But we want to reinforce the point that this is intended for the democratisation process in Serbia.
We have created a second budgetary line entitled ‘reconstruction’. We have included a so-called token entry in this. We urge the Council to join Parliament in weighing up all the possibilities that the Interinstitutional Agreement has to offer, and to set an appropriate level of funding for aid to Serbia. This is irrespective of the EUR 180 million we transferred last night for emergency aid, for the remainder of the year, because this money has come from the emergency reserve and is only to be used for humanitarian aid, i.e. to help the Serbs get through the winter during the last few months of the year.
In addition, though, we expect the Council to finally get together with Parliament and take a look at the multiannual allocations, both for MEDA and for CARDS, and decide on a suitable figure. We cannot go on like this, slugging it out with one another budget after budget; always over the same issues, and always going through the same motions.
So here we are in October 2000, with only a short while to go before the financial framework for Budget 2001 is agreed. Over the past few weeks we have repeatedly scrutinised all the figures, forecasts, and categories of our budget. We have turned each individual budgetary line inside out, so that the figures we decide on on Thursday are viable, and so that Budget 2001 does not have a fairytale-like quality. We will submit a budget that accords with the principles of wholly economical budgetary management. We have been very careful with the European taxpayer’s money, very strict yet still reasonable. The figures that we, as Parliament’s Committee on Budgets, are to put before the House, will not meet – and of course we are a little disappointed about this – with the unanimous support of all our fellow delegates in the specialist committees. But we set our own rules, and even kept to them and acted in accordance with previously adopted principles. By the time we had finished, our draft for the first reading could be said to be true to the motto that the art of drawing up a budget is to spread the disappointments evenly.
On Thursday we will adopt a trim, but sensible budget. All I can say to the Council is: follow our example. Our goal cannot be to diet to the point of collapse. All too often, weight-consciousness turns into anorexia. But there is more to a viable and dynamic Union than a supposedly slimline budget. If we want to command respect on the international stage, strength and competence are the order of the day!
No doubt it is the Council that has been left most disappointed, but it has absolutely no one but itself to blame for this, indeed it probably deliberately provoked it. How else are we to interpret the Council’s proposal that payments should be increased by a maximum of 3.5%? Parliament, at any rate, understands that the payments to be included in Budget 2001 are a function of the commitments entered into in previous years and those we hope to enter into in 2001, and we must determine them accordingly.
Even the Commission’s estimate of payments for the preliminary draft budget has been very cautious, too cautious as far as we are concerned. If you look at the budgetary implementation schedules for headings 2, 3, 4 and 7, then you will note that only an average 8% of all commitments are covered by payments. Quite a number of budgetary lines are not covered at all. When you then consider that the Commission would concentrate initially on cutting back the amounts outstanding in such a situation, which naturally we would also favour, there would, however, be far too great a risk of not being able to continue with a budgetary line deemed important by Parliament.
It is a mystery to me how, on this basis, the Commission is to preserve the strict relationship between commitment appropriations and payment appropriations, which it is in fact committed to do under the terms of the Interinstitutional Agreement. Therefore, in principle, we have raised the payments in headings 3, 4 and 7 to a level that will ensure 25% coverage of the commitments to be entered into in 2001 as regards individual budgetary lines.
However, we sometimes asked ourselves during the discussions, how the Council could justify its vote, for example with regard to heading 1. When the Commission put forward a proposal, in late spring, to take the EUR 300 million required for the revision of heading 4 from the margin left in heading 1, the Council vehemently resisted this straightaway. On no account was the margin to be reduced! But that did not stop the Council from cutting agricultural expenditure by a total of EUR 555 million. Where is the logic in that?
Essentially, we have reinstated the preliminary draft budget in its entirety. Above all, we want there to be sufficient money available under heading 1B, for the development of rural areas. There must also be adequate funding available for those areas whose aim it is to achieve a knowledge-based society and to improve the quality of life of the citizens of the European Union. We took the Commission’s line and increased expenditure for research by 8%. What is particularly dear to our hearts though, is something that we have campaigned for from the very outset of this budgetary procedure, i.e. to be able to make an appropriate contribution, through the European budget, to fighting unemployment.
The level of unemployment in Europe is still intolerably high. Countermeasures must be taken against this at every political level; i.e. at local, regional, national, and I hardly need mention, at European level. Three years ago, we launched our employment initiative, which involved helping small and medium-sized enterprises to acquire risk-bearing capital. We are all aware that most jobs in Europe are in small and medium-sized enterprises, and that they are the ones that create the most new jobs. We all know too, that it is no longer all that difficult for high-tech SMEs to acquire capital, because – and our initiative helped bring this about – the capital market situation of these companies has in fact improved considerably.
Therefore we want an employment initiative with a slightly different emphasis. We want to carry on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, so that they are able to benefit from our common market in exactly the same way that larger companies do. Above all, we want to equip them to make use of the new technologies. The various instruments we have at our disposal to this end should enable us to succeed in this, whether we are talking in terms of start-up capital, sureties, loan guarantees, or even the joint European venture instrument. Cross-border cooperation between SMUs is precisely what we need to create the European added value we are all always so keen to achieve. We should therefore continue to deploy this instrument, albeit using simplified procedures, as proposed by the Commission."@en1
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