Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-07-Speech-4-090"
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"en.20021107.4.4-090"2
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"We Moderates have today voted in favour of Mrs Schroedter’s report because it emphasises the necessity of maintaining the budget ceiling, as well as the need to abolish regional aid in those regions that no longer have GDP levels of less than 75% of the EU average.
It is, however, important to emphasise that regional policy must be reformed. The process should not continue whereby the EU is being turned into a transfer union. Paying in money to the EU only then to receive it back again in the form of structural aid is not a good way of solving the problem of underdeveloped regions. The benefit of the EU for the new Member States does not consist in its distributing subsidies at the taxpayers’ expense.
Instead of providing targeted subsidies to weaker regions in the Member States, there should be reductions in the membership fees for those regions that have incomes substantially below the EU average. In that way, no Member States would lose out economically, and they would also avoid the potentially harmful effects upon their own economies of heavy dependency upon subsidies.
As the report very rightly points out, there has been cheating and fraud involving money channelled via the EU budget. The regulations governing subsidies must therefore be made clearer and less ambiguous.
The EU should also support cross-border regional cooperation, above all between countries that have previously been in conflict with one another or that have strained relations."@en1
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