Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-176"
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"en.20030211.9.2-176"2
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". – Mr President, honourable Members, the Copenhagen summit was a great triumph, a success both for the new Member States and for the European Union, a success for all those who have worked for so many years to enable the enlargement to take place, adding the new Member States, the candidate countries in Eastern Europe, Malta and Cyprus. It also made it possible to conclude negotiations on the financial package, which is not entirely straightforward.
We in the Commission have decided on the following proposal as regards Cyprus: as the tables for enlargement agreed on at the Copenhagen European Council do not yet include feasible resources – in the form of financial aid – for Northern Cyprus, the Commission is now submitting to you two tables, one for the adjustment of the Financial Perspective with Northern Cyprus and one without it. The significance of this in concrete terms is that, in the event of a political solution being found for Northern Cyprus, the whole process will not have to go back to the beginning and start again; instead, the adjusted table, with EUR 273 million more than that without Northern Cyprus, can become effective at once. I believe, firstly, that this way of doing things sends out the right political signal and, secondly, that it is of course the simpler option from the procedural point of view.
In future, the Budget for the 25-Member European Union will no longer make any distinction between new and old Member States. The next Budget, for 2004, can, in accordance with the proposal, amount to a maximum of 1.12% of gross national income – equivalent to EUR 115 billion – in commitment appropriations and 1.08% – that is to say EUR 111 billion – in payment appropriations. In accordance with item 25 of the Inter-Institutional Agreement of 1999, this Commission proposal will now be debated and processed by both Parliament and the Council, as the Inter-Institutional Agreement states quite clearly that adjustment of the Financial Perspective in the course of any enlargement is a matter for a joint resolution by Parliament and the European Council.
The next trilogue is to be held as soon as next Thursday, when we will have the first opportunity to do interinstitutional work on the basis of the Commission proposal, in order to be able to create in good time the framework for the first Budget for a 25-Member European Union.
With effect from their accession, starting in May 2004, the new Member States will be able to participate in all the support programmes funded by the European Budget. Involvement in market measures will facilitate the promotion of agriculture. Farmers will receive direct grants in aid, and the aid will be particularly important to farmers with small farms.
EUR 6.7 billion of Structural Fund resources are to be allocated to the financing of projects in the areas of employment, infrastructure, higher environmental standards and the improvement of transport routes. The new Member States will participate to an increased extent in the research programmes, and in everything else – programmes to promote energy and the environment, student exchanges and the youth programme.
And, of course, progressively more and more staff from the new Member States will be working in and for the European Union in Brussels and Luxembourg. And a new programme – an entirely new programme – is to be set up: the so-called Schengen facility, intended to co-finance controls at the external borders.
Financial planning will need to be adjusted in order to anchor these items of expenditure in the Budget. What resulted from the Copenhagen negotiations was a balanced compromise between different interests. The financial framework for enlargement remains within the framework fixed in 1999 by the Inter-institutional Agreement for the period 2000-2006. Today, the Commission adopted its proposal for the adjustment of the Financial Perspective. In it, the results of the Copenhagen negotiations are allotted to the individual headings. At the same time, the Financial Perspective is adjusted in line with the prices current in 2004.
The Commission proposal on enlargement states that, when expressed in current prices, the resources for agriculture and the Structural Funds, for internal policies and administration amount in total to an increase in commitment appropriations of EUR 45 billion, an increase which is still within the Berlin framework. To put it another way, the upper limits are being reduced by EUR 1.7 billion in comparison with the hypothetical upper limits in the Inter-Institutional Agreement for the period up to 2006.
At the heart of this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Commission's proposal relating to the category of pre-accession aid, category 7. We propose that this be left unchanged. In future, it is from this that pre-accession aid for Bulgaria and Romania is to be paid, and we propose that these aid packages should, as against the 2003 amounts, be increased by 20%, 30%, and then, in 2006, by 40%, thus reaching, in 2006, an absolute maximum of EUR 1.4 billion. I think that this considerable aid for both these states will then have the effect of enabling us to work intensively on helping them achieve their objective of becoming Member States of the European Union in 2007.
The Commission and the Council also propose that pre-accession aid for Turkey, funded up to now from the foreign affairs budget, should in future be funded from category 7. We will shortly be presenting a proposal for a considerable increase in the aid given to Turkey. I believe it to be in the common interest of the European Union that efforts at reform be strongly supported by resources for pre-accession aid.
A new category has to be created in the Financial Perspective for entering free-standing financial aid, the so-called lump sum transfers agreed on in Copenhagen, into future Budgets. We propose that this category should similar in every respect to the adjustment of the Financial Perspective that was made when the EU was last enlarged by the accession of Finland, Sweden and Austria, when lump sums were also agreed on, thus requiring the insertion of a new category into the Financial Perspective as it stood at the time."@en1
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