Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-241"
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"en.20001024.7.2-241"2
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"Mr President, may I first of all express my admiration for the rapporteur. It is astonishing how, in the course of the many sittings we have had, you have juggled the various aspects of this difficult material. I feel quite dizzy sometimes, and I have to make sure I am keeping up. I should really like, however, to set another priority. I recall that during the last legislative period – when, if I remember rightly, you were a budgetary expert in the Berlin regional parliament, Commissioner Schreyer – we discussed whether we could manage with the 1.27 limit, given the problems and tasks facing us. Enlargement was the issue at stake. At that time, the efforts on behalf of Kosovo and Serbia were still not even in the pipeline. We discussed whether we should call for this framework to be expanded. With the budget and also with the draft budget for 2001, we are now a good EUR 20 billion below this 1.27 margin, and I should like to make it clear to my fellow MEPs that it does not make sense to engage in useless expenditure. Nor, however, does it make sense for a Parliament to restrict itself in the Budget and yet always to meet countries’ demands and to make proposals as to how everything might be achieved at a time when policy is being extended and the Budget trimmed.
Another area I wanted to address is that of agricultural policy, where most of the savings have been made. I am adamant that it is not that too much money has gone on agriculture and the countryside. Instead, it has gone into the wrong channels in recent years. Those of us in Parliament have a strong vested interest in what is, or is not, politically apposite. In this connection, I should like to call attention to the fact that – specifically through the law relating to budget discipline which I would describe as a law designed to safeguard the budget – compulsory funds for agriculture are changed into non-compulsory funds in cases in which, on the one hand, the funds are insufficient and countries have had to grant additional appropriations but in which, on the other hand, the Commission is required, whenever this framework is in danger of being too restrictive, to make proposals to ensure that these appropriations are to no degree exceeded. I think there are dangers in our continuing always to exploit agriculture for more resources, in our cutting back on it little by little and in our basing the next allocation on what has now of necessity been saved. In this way, we slowly embark upon a slippery slope whereby the money we urgently need for rural development is lost."@en1
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