Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-146"
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"en.20001024.5.2-146"2
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"Mr President, as draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on the Environment on this year’s budget, I want to acknowledge the difficult framework in which it has been constructed and the serious pressures upon all of us. I would like to pay tribute to the work done by the rapporteur, Mrs Haug, in trying to resolve some very difficult questions this year because of the immense pressures that have been brought to bear upon the budget at a very late stage.
We must have the courage of our convictions and insist upon finding the very modest finance needed to fulfil our key objectives. In that regard, I would draw the Commission’s and the House’s attention to the following issues. The first is the decision by the Committee on Budgets to place into reserve the monies agreed for the Life programme. This was an astonishing decision and left many of us feeling that this whole very important programme had simply become a football in a game between the Budgets Committee and the Commission. It demonstrated that those bodies did not recognise the importance of this programme to the environment. We need to reverse that decision in the vote this week in the House and make those funds immediately available, because there is an enormous demand for their utilisation.
The treatment by the Budgets Committee of several agencies has been proven to be unfair and unjust this year and in past years, in particular the refusal to increase monies to the Drugs Agency. If it is supported by the House this week, it will put a stop to the recently begun programme for the approval of orphan drugs for rare diseases. Unless that funding is restored in a vote this week in Parliament, I would anticipate a very serious situation arising and considerable distress to many people in Europe.
A similar injustice has been done to the Environment Agency, given its increased workload as a result of enlargement. In future years a more thoughtful, consistent and sensitive approach to the financial needs of the agencies will be needed and I hope the approach of treating them all the same, which has prevailed in previous years, will now be dropped. They are the main objectives of the Environment Committee. They can be achieved with an absolutely minuscule amount of finance. It is the duty of the House to give those points their support in the vote this week, to demonstrate its continued commitment to protecting the environment and improving public health."@en1
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