Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-034"
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"en.20010403.3.2-034"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Costa Neves has produced an important report on the 2002 budget guidelines. Unfortunately, however, I have to point out that there are a number of inconsistencies in the report.
The first inconsistency is in the choice of priorities: social issues, which are the focus of our citizens’ expectations, are not included; employment, a subject to which the European Council said it intended to devote the recent Stockholm Summit, since this is obviously one of Europe’s core challenges – Mr Pronk and Mrs Gill mentioned this point earlier – does not feature prominently enough in the list of priorities; and enlargement, a seminal ambition if there ever was one, is also missing from the list of priorities. To tell you the truth, I do not understand.
There is also an inconsistency in the report between the stated objectives and the financial resources provided to achieve them. Therefore, although it is, of course, right to focus on food safety and financial support to the agricultural sector given the consequences of the BSE crisis and of foot-and-mouth disease, this intention seems to me to be inconsistent with the commitment made to maintain budgetary discipline, along with the absence of any cost estimate of the BSE crisis and given the rejection of my group’s proposal to create a special reserve for BSE grants. Mr Virrankoski also highlighted this problem.
The final inconsistency, which is of a more general nature, is in this tendency to look at every one of the European Union’s political ambitions primarily from the point of view of cutting back on expenditure. The rapporteur says that we must prepare for the reform of the common agricultural policy, bearing in mind the forthcoming round of negotiations within the framework of the WTO and the implications of enlargement. We know what that means. As for the EU’s external policies, the rapporteur insists that performance targets first need to be established. What true significance can such a request have for the Balkans, the Middle East and for our partners in the southern Mediterranean, if not the prospect of cuts or redeployments in various programmes, due to an unacceptable cost/effectiveness ratio?
With regard to pre-accession expenditure, the rapporteur again stresses that we need to examine closely whether this is effective in terms of the convergence of the applicant countries’ economies with those of the Member States. A word to the wise, however. Only one chapter seems to find favour with the rapporteur and that is the one on European defence. In his opinion, and in his opinion alone, he alludes to the idea of a revision of the financial perspective, the taboo subject of all the previous debates on the budget.
That is certainly one of the reasons why a third of the Members within the Committee on Budgets immediately refused to approve this report. In fact, given the enormous hurdles currently standing in Europe’s path, we cannot afford to duck underneath them."@en1
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