Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-163"
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"en.20001024.5.2-163"2
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"Mr President, the EU’s budget is the Union’s choice instrument to define political areas of interest as well as core areas. In this process, we as Parliament need to ensure that we serve the interests of all European citizens. These may be citizens who would like to see the Union develop into a federation, but also citizens who are sceptical about Europe, as demonstrated recently by the Danish population. Unfortunately, Mrs Haug has adopted a political line which only takes account of the supporters of a federal Europe. A line in which she, like her predecessor Mr Bourlanges, is attempting to break through the financial ceiling. Over the past few months, Commissioner Patten has repeatedly pointed to the Union’s enormous payment backlog. Unfortunately, the rapporteur still has not grasped that this is why we must tread water for the time being. “Let’s do better with less”, as Commissioner Patten said, is lost on her.
Budget policy needs to instil public confidence in European policy. The fact that this confidence is lacking is obvious from the drop in the currency value of the Euro, which, since its launch, has lost nearly 30% of its value compared to the Yen and the American Dollar. That confidence will not grow by ploughing even more money into the budget, but it will if the budget is implemented efficiently. For this to happen, difficult choices have to be made, but unfortunately, it appears that the rapporteur is not prepared to make these choices; instead, she has opted for the easy way out by increasing the budget.
The refusal to set priorities is most prominent in the area of foreign and security policy. Naturally we too are in favour of giving aid to the Balkans and Serbia. But the money for that aid can be freed up by setting priorities within foreign policy. What are the core tasks for the Union and what tasks belong to the Member States? A Union which does not dare make choices will create more distance between itself and its citizens, who do need to make choices in their personal budgets.
Setting priorities is being dodged by abusing the flexibility instrument. It is quite justified to deploy this instrument for new, unforeseen expenditure and is therefore the principle
in the case of the sudden revolution in Serbia. The rapporteur’s proposal to use this principle for MEDA, however, does not meet the ‘new’ or ‘unforeseen’ requirement, and is all the more surprising in the light of the fact that spending levels have not been reached in the MEDA programme. Although the rapporteur attended the meeting of the Committee on Budgets yesterday, she failed to draw lessons from the credit transfers which were being discussed. It appeared yesterday that 25% of the amount budgeted for 2000 for Latin America was not used and is now being transferred for aid to Kosovo. Mr Bourlanges made the cursory note that the 2000 budget for Latin America had probably been somewhat too generous. There is therefore leeway in foreign policy, i.e. category 4, and the proposed increases of the appropriations budgeted for for Latin America are not based on fact.
The Council agrees with the creation of 400 posts which, according to Commissioner Patten, the Commission needs in order to eliminate the backlog of payments. In the light of this, it is not justified that the Council should considerably reduce the category 4 payments. We must give the Commission the opportunity to eliminate the backlog by increasing its staffing levels.
Finally, Mr Heaton-Harris was right to refer in his amendments to the onesidedness of many European programmes, in which the citizen is treated to a propaganda-like tale on European integration, and at the expense of the citizens themselves would you believe. The Union must realise that certainly not all citizens dream of far-reaching integration. Programmes of the Union should therefore adopt a more neutral tone, so as to prevent one specific political hue being put across at the expense of all citizens. Democracy cannot be reconciled with a dictatorship of the majority."@en1
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