Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-02-Speech-2-022"
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"en.20030902.1.2-022"2
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"Mr President, I have stood before this House many times over the past four years and called for revisions to the way in which European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds are administered. Today is no different.
It is extremely rare that an instance occurs when I can say that I am in complete agreement with a member of the UK Labour Party. This happened recently in a landmark speech by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who, as we all know, called for the repatriation of regional aid. In essence, this is a good idea. The current system is, as we have repeatedly seen, unworkable, and the bureaucracy is becoming increasingly stifling.
Time and again we have seen reports passing through the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism highlighting the inequalities that exist as a result of a system that fails the very people it sets out to help. I know that the idea Mr Brown mooted was not well received here – or indeed in the Commission – not least by members of his own party. I have my doubts over just how far the UK Government will push for this idea.
I voted against the Mastorakis report in committee, not because it was a bad report but because there were references I felt we could not ignore. Clearly, paragraph 2's stout defence of the Commission's stance in rejecting renationalisation would differ from my own view, as we have already discussed. Nor can I support any reference to tripartite contracts: by allowing the Commission to institute such actions directly with regions, we would be allowing our nation states to be bypassed.
I have always voiced my concerns at these repeated attempts to circumvent national parliamentary scrutiny. I shall continue to do so because I see this as a dangerous precedent, opening the door to a Europe of the regions by stealth – something I totally reject.
I conclude with a stark fact: billions of euros are still in the Commission's coffers, without a chance of being spent. In future, what we need is a more focused and concentrated approach on coordinated priorities for funding, cross-border projects or major items of Community interest – the rest should be left to the Member States."@en1
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