Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-14-Speech-4-029"
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"en.20001214.1.4-029"2
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"At the second reading of the budget, Parliament has just approved the full reinstatement to the Cohesion Fund budget line of EUR 360 million, which it had placed in reserve on the first reading.
For the Portuguese Socialists, the Cohesion Fund is a mainstay of the economic and social cohesion policy, which was launched by the Single European Act and substantially strengthened by the Maastricht Treaty. Since it was set up, the Cohesion Fund has had a considerable impact on two areas of great Community interest – the environment and trans-European transport networks; it has been effectively implemented in the Community budget and has had one of the highest implementation rates in the entire Community budget.
As our comrade, Mário Soares, stated at the investiture of the current Prodi Commission, the most negative point in its programme was the abolition of the Service Directorate for this Fund and its removal from the name and directory of the former Directorate-General XVI. This abolition, which began to take place in the middle of last year, as we had anticipated, resulted in a dramatic fall in the speed with which projects were approved and payments made, to the point where the annual implementation of authorisations of this fund at the end of June 2000 was less than one per cent.
In its proposal to Parliament to cut EUR 360 million from the 2001 payments, the Commission was showing worrying signs of a lack of interest, motivation and will to fully implement the financial package agreed upon by the Berlin European Council. After this proposal, the Portuguese Socialists decided to vote against the budget at its first reading if it did cut EUR 360 million from the draft budget, agreeing to vote for the budget only when this position was changed to place this money in reserve.
In the face of the joint efforts by the representatives of several governments in the Council, particularly the Portuguese Government, and members of various Parliamentary groups, in which it is fair to highlight the Portuguese Socialist members, the trialogue held between the Commission, the Council and Parliament decided to reinstate the whole of the funding laid down in the first Council reading for the Cohesion Fund payments, and Parliament has just ratified this position. We are delighted with this decision and now commit ourselves to remaining vigilant over the implementation of the Cohesion Fund.
In order to make up for the delayed start in the implementation of the Cohesion Fund in this programme period, the beneficiary Member States will have to redouble their efforts and their care and, most of all, the Commission will have to give it top priority, especially by increasing the human and financial resources allocated to monitoring the fund."@en1
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