Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-170"
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"en.20011023.7.2-170"2
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"Mr President, a very strict budget policy has been adopted in the drafting of next year's budget. As the GNP for the EU Member States has grown faster than the increase in payment appropriations, the amount the EU budget represents in the figure for combined GNP has shrunk to 1.03%. That indicates that next year’s draft budget will not exhibit any special areas of focus. The permitted ceiling in the EU budget is 1.27% of the combined GNP for the Member States. There will consequently be room in the budget for areas of special focus, but the Council and the Commission do not seem to have the political will or the ability to prepare any such areas. Examples of them might be employment or healthy food.
The EU political élite no longer even debates the matter of the prevention of unemployment, let alone try to combat it with appropriate policy. Our group has traditionally stressed the importance of preventing unemployment. In most cases unemployment is not the fault of the unemployed person him or herself: that person is at the mercy of the economic situation as it happens to be at any one time. We must have a policy against unemployment. The political élite and EU officials certainly look after their own interests. We are to have an early retirement scheme that will generously reward those who no longer, even through retraining, can be made into functional tyres to go on EU wheels. If there are hundreds of officials no longer needed, that shows just what a bad state EU staff policy is in.
The Commission’s ability to implement Parliament’s political decisions is nothing less than wretched. The gap between the budget that has been decided and the budget implemented by the Commission is always much too wide. There are no delays in payment when it comes to issues that are important to the Commission, whereas there often are in issues important to the Parliament. The EU budget is a political document, as it channels money to the EU élite bodies, and now also to the European political parties and for EU propaganda. That is not the way to make a citizen’s Europe.
If an illegal war was waged in the bombing of Yugoslavia, assistance for the country’s reconstruction should not be the object of cuts. Let us hope that the CARDS vote does not take the large groups by surprise."@en1
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