Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-09-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20020409.3.2-038"2
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". – Madam President, on behalf of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism, I thank the rapporteur, Mr McCartin for his report and efforts and, in particular, for the way in which he highlighted the major concern of my committee, namely the slow rate of implementation of the Community's structural funds.
As he so rightly highlighted, that is the bulk of the problem in terms of the surplus that this Parliament is addressing. The question to which my committee failed to receive a satisfactory answer from the Commission, was why do we allow such a situation to develop in the first place? It was predictable that in the first year of the structural fund programmes rates of implementation would be very low. Yet we were faced with wholly unrealistic budget forecast expectations and scenarios which, by definition, could not be fulfilled. So we are dealing with a situation where, in many areas, there has been almost no expenditure whatsoever under certain budget lines for the Community's structural funds. We believe this makes it much more difficult for this Parliament and my committee to scrutinise the budget adequately and rigorously.
As a regular item on our committee agenda, we have now decided to focus on budget scrutiny and, at each discussion, we invite the Commission and the Council to participate with us in a thorough review of expenditure within the structural fund area. But that job is made very difficult by these wholly unrealistic budgets. The Commissioner must explain how we are expected properly to evaluate a budget which is in itself extremely questionable.
Our second concern really relates to the second point the rapporteur made in his opening remarks – the way in which the structural funds are currently managed. We share his concern that the regulations are overly complex and make our job, as a Parliament, of scrutinising the budget very difficult. So we have a double problem there. Many organisations, individuals, groups, associations and communities that are eligible for structural funds fail to receive their fair share because of the over-complexity of the application process. We, as a Parliament – and the other authorities charged with monitoring budgetary expenditure – have a problem in that we cannot adequately monitor expenditure to ensure value for money.
My final point concerns the trans-European networks. We reiterate our view that the Commission is right to focus on fewer projects but we oppose the fact that the Commission is now planning to make a EUR 60 billion addition to the trans-European network transport budget line. We invite the Commission to comment on how they can ensure value for money when they are planning such a massive increase in expenditure."@en1
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