Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-199"
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"en.20011023.7.2-199"2
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"Mr President, I want to thank Mr Costa Neves for his efforts on behalf of all of us in this procedure and to say that it is a very technical and difficult task he took on: he has discharged it with great skill and shown much patience and kindness to all of us who wanted our ideas taken into consideration. I have not known a Commissioner who has followed the proceedings so closely or who has spent so much time with the Committee on Budgets as the present Commissioner. Of course, in many ways this is a highly technical exercise and, unlike national budgets, it does not have much effect on the course of economic development in the European Union. It is too small for that, even in the area of Structural Funds, for even the most generous beneficiaries receive a very small percentage of GNP. Ireland, at the best, was getting 2%, Portugal and the poorer areas of Spain are getting between 1% and 2% of GNP. It is not a very generous outlay of money, but if we can use it in order to guide their economic policies in the direction that we think is best, then the money can be usefully spent.
There is one idea and one hope that I have always entertained. I believe I said some years ago that compared to national parliaments we were like children playing shop. The amount of resources at our disposal is so small and there is so little we can do with them, but there is one area that I would like to see developed. I do not want to see an expansion of public spending at European level. But in the area of economic cooperation and development, if we could only pool at European level the resources which the countries of the European Union and the European Union itself devote to international cooperation and development cooperation, we could convert individual national efforts into a common European effort without increasing the sum of taxation. This is essential if we are to develop a common foreign and security policy. I believe we could have a much greater impact on the development of the poorer countries and redirect our foreign policy in a way that we could help the poor, help to establish peace and give us real influence in the world. If there is one area in which we should demand subsidiarity from the national states to the European Union, it is here."@en1
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