Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-160"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20001024.5.2-160"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, the French Presidency of the European Union is coming to an end at the time when Parliament is voting on the budget for 2001. There is one fact which must be noted, and which we must, as French Members of Parliament, deplore, and that is that the Council has failed with regard to one of the traditional responsibilities of French politics, its responsibility to the farmers of Europe, with a cut of more than half a billion euros in heading 1. It is also, unfortunately, true, as a number of people in this Chamber have commented, with regard to the Mediterranean countries, with a swinging cut in funds for the MEDA programme.
This has got to be the worst possible message to be sending out to our friends and neighbours around the Mediterranean at the time of enlargement. We can only, in such circumstances, support Parliament’s attitude and the back the amendment in favour of MEDA, restoring the appropriations of the preliminary draft budget, in the same way that we must be pleased at the significant increase in agricultural expenditure and the special place given to the second pillar of the CAP, promotion of the countryside, while, however, deploring the position of the Committee on Budgets, which rejected almost all the amendments from the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development seeking to compensate for the Council’s drastic cuts in the fruit and vegetable sector and also in the pig farming sector.
In the field of external aid, will we ever be able to realise the hopes of President Kostunica who in recent days has been most forthright in declaring that the fact that France held the Presidency of the European Union at these moments that are so critical for the people of Serbia and the continent as a whole was the work of Providence? The amount of aid allocated to the Balkans might give him to think so, with both the EUR 200 million released from the 2000 budget as emergency aid and the appropriations for 2001 which, even so, represent an increase of 30% over and above the 2000 budget. That being the case, the level of funding allocated to Kosovo is not without certain problems. In view of the appropriations which could have been committed for the first months of the year 2000, questions can be asked as to Kosovo’s real capacity to absorb the EUR 350 million planned for 2001. Most of all, however, the victory of the Serbian President forces us henceforth to recognise Belgrade as sole discussion partner for all decisions, all intervention, and all routing of aid via the provinces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The European Union no longer has any alibi since the fall of Milosevic. The policy of aid for the Balkans must now concentrate massively on Serbia, a region impoverished by our bombing raids last year and by our economic sanctions which hit it so hard.
The aid we propose to contribute must safeguard rather than threaten the Serbian national identity. We should, therefore, remember that both Kosovo and Montenegro form an integral part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Let us therefore put an end to direct aid to these provinces – occasionally without a legal basis, as we saw in this Chamber not so long ago in the case of Montenegro – direct aid that serves primarily to fuel the separatist movements.
In conclusion, we must clearly remember that, as far as we are concerned, aid for the Balkans in no way justifies requests for revision of the financial perspective. The bottom line of every budget year shows a surplus, indicating that the amounts of appropriations we have voted on do not correspond to the real needs of the situation. It is possible to make substantial savings, either by saving the monies arising from the under implementation of certain programmes, or by the European Union’s at last taking a decision to stop using budget lines for the purposes of pro-Europe propaganda. But in that case, unfortunately, there are many examples: special treatment given to associations with declared federalist aims or to the many NGOs whose roles, philosophies and operations are highly questionable, the funding of European political parties, via the sums swallowed up in the Prince programme, in an attempt to convince the citizens of Member States of the validity of the euro at a time when the European currency is experiencing a loss of confidence widely shared by Europeans, from our Danish friends right up to the managers of the European Central Bank."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples