Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-04-Speech-3-332"
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"en.20010704.9.3-332"2
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"Mr President, the package under discussion concerns the EU’s accounts for last year, own resources and next year’s budget. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the rapporteurs, Mrs Haug, Mr Ferber and Mr Costa Neves. Last year’s accounts are astonishing: they show a surplus of more than eleven billion euros. This is because revenue was EUR 3.3 billion more than was estimated and expenditure EUR 8.5 billion less than forecast. The increase in revenue is a good thing. However, the saving in expenditure is deceptive, based, as it is, mainly on the lamentable under-utilisation of Structural Funds. A good 20% of payments were not taken up, amounting to EUR 6.5 billion. These payments will be carried over to the years following, meaning that no real savings have been made at all.
The main reason for under-utilisation was that new Objective programmes were slow to be approved. Only half of the EU Objective 1 programmes came to be approved in 2000, almost two years after the Agenda 2000 decision taken in Berlin. Just 8% of the Objective 2 programmes were approved. No money at all was spent on new Community initiatives for the second year in succession. Administrative payments are in a pitiful state. The Commission must improve its ability to pay considerably. It has to bear the responsibility for seeing to it that matters are dealt with efficiently and on time. The present omissions will be reflected as backlogs in budgets in the years to come.
The other peculiarity in the accounts is the reduction in the refund made in respect of the United Kingdom’s contribution. It is odd that amendments should be made to this supplementary budget that go back to the budgets of two and four years ago. Why were these amendments not made at the time?
Mr Costa Neves’s report provides a good basis for discussions next year. According to preliminary estimates, administrative expenditure of the institutions under heading 5 will exceed the financial perspectives, which is mainly due to the increase of more than 9% in the Council’s expenditure, which, in turn, is the result of a rise in CFSP expenditure. Parliament must strongly insist on its demand that a separate plan showing a structure of the posts involved in the administration of this policy should be put forward. This expenditure is not part of a gentleman’s agreement between Parliament and the Council according to which the institutions do not interfere in one another’s budgets."@en1
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