Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-28-Speech-3-082"
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"en.20010228.5.3-082"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I do not want to go back over ground that has already been covered, and so I will refrain from describing the content of the amending budget proposed by the Commission and already adopted by the Council.
Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to reflect on what I believe are two extremely relevant points which featured in the amendments tabled in the Committee on Budgets in the context of this debate. Firstly, the obligatory costs. As we are all aware, Parliament does not have much power when it comes to these costs, which include agriculture. It is the Council which has the last word, for the CAP has always been synonymous with the European Community and the now the European Union. I feel that the time has come to move on and to grant this Chamber greater powers: we have been elected by the European citizens and, as such, we have the duty to represent their interests in all fields. As part of the budgetary authority, we should have the right to exert weighty influence on all budgetary matters.
The second point is the splitting of the costs between the Member States and the Union. The Group of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party has tabled a series of amendments on this point, seeking, as you are aware, to revise the intervention percentages to achieve a 50/50 split between the Union and the Member States. I do not feel that this would be the right thing to do, and I will tell you why. In the first place, given the difficulties the political world is currently experiencing as a result of the BSE crises, such a decision would appear in the citizens' eyes to indicate withdrawal from the problem by the European institutions. In other words, the Union would soon be accused of being ready to intervene to ban State aid or set milk quotas, but just as ready to wash its hands of crises in the moment of need. Take heed: when I say citizens I am not just protecting the farmers, who have been directly hit by the crisis, but also and above all the individual consumer who has, quite frankly, been in a state of terror for months now over a situation which is getting worse every day. That is who we must protect, and it is certainly not by offloading the financial burden of the situation onto the Member States that we will do so. Secondly, if we were to support this political position we would be encouraging the renationalisation of the common agricultural policy, which would be an absurd thing to do at a time when the post-Nice debate certainly does not provide for the cancellation of Community policies."@en1
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