Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-19-Speech-3-082"
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"en.20010919.7.3-082"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Madam President-in-Office of the Council, I consider the policy of economic and social cohesion to be one of the European Union's undoubted achievements, attesting as it does the principle of solidarity between the highly-developed regions and the weak ones. Of course, on further analysis of the way structural policy has worked to date, it has to be said that it has a lot of inadequacies.
No, I am not only accusing the Commissioner; we put up with this sort of thing all the time! Not my Group, though; we have always submitted the relevant amendments. Perhaps, Mr Jarzembowski, the PPE-DE Group would like to join in next time, then we should almost make up a majority! In the context of this discussion, we must also of course bear in mind that there are very special regions. I regret to have to say, Commissioner, that the border regions programme imposed by the Commission is utterly inadequate! Perhaps we will have to give some thought to doing something similar...
Firstly: The divergence between Member States may well have decreased, but the differences within them – between highly-developed regions and weak ones – have increased.
Secondly: The unemployment rate in the weak regions has not significantly decreased.
Thirdly: The average per capita income of the wealthiest regions, which make up 10% of the Union's population, is still 2.6 times higher than in the regions in which 10% of the poorest inhabitants live.
Fourthly: The underdeveloped regions still do not possess self-supporting economic and social cycles. They therefore have enormous problems when it comes to actually reducing the amount by which they lag behind the developed areas.
Fifthly: You yourselves can see that the commitment appropriations yet to be settled totalled almost EUR 42 billion at the end of 1999, in other words the Structural Fund's input for specific projects is inefficient! This means that other measures, even other projects, must be deliberately chosen, something which can, of course, only be done in collaboration with the Member States.
Whatever the shortcomings, the enormous amount of change cannot be overlooked. Differences would otherwise be markedly greater. This also means that we must carry on with the Structural Fund policy. You have just said, Mr Barnier, that there must be no taboos. Too true! All the Member States said more or less the same thing at the informal meeting in Namur, and proposals were submitted. But sooner or later, we must get to the point. At some juncture, it will have to be said that these proposals cost X amount of money, and we must either make it available or we have to admit that we are not going to.
This cannot be put off for ever and a day. You will be aware that the upper limit equals 1.27% of GDP within the financial perspective for 2000 to 2006. Where are we in real terms? At 1.06%. You can hardly call that putting real structural policy into practice! It is also because of Parliament..."@en1
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"(Interruption by Mr Jarzembowski)"1
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