Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-19-Speech-3-095"
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"en.20010919.7.3-095"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, cohesion is a fundamental pillar of the European Union. In fact, there can be no political cohesion in the European Union without economic and social cohesion, despite what some of the federalists may think. On the other hand, however, there can be no economic and social cohesion without political cohesion, as hard as this may be for some nationalists to swallow. Cohesion policy, which has played a key role in recent years, will have an even more crucial role to play in future, as a result of enlargement. Cohesion policy is really a prerequisite for enlargement’s success. This goes without saying. Nevertheless, Mr President, there are certain paradoxes inherent in enlargement: by making the European Union poorer in terms of average per capita income, we will be making the countries that are currently the least favoured richer as if by some form of numerical magic. This is a problem. What my country, Portugal, and other cohesion countries cannot accept is, as a consequence of enlargement, being relegated to the margins of cohesion policy and becoming the victims of the statistical machinery that automatically places them over the critical threshold of 75%.
With this in mind, I feel that future cohesion policy must not stray from the following principles:
firstly: increasing the budgetary resources earmarked for cohesion; we cannot evade this issue, despite what Mr Walter has said;
secondly, guaranteeing that the interests of the current least favoured regions and countries are not touched and that a fair method will be found so that they continue to benefit from the level of support they receive today;
thirdly: a thorough reform of the common agricultural policy and greater protection of the rural world;
fourthly: the definition and implementation of a development strategy for Europe that relieves the congestion from current urban centres, which are dense and concentrated, to the benefit of the whole of Europe."@en1
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