Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-02-Speech-2-037"
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"en.20030902.1.2-037"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I shall do no more in this debate than highlight the paradox confronting economic and social cohesion policy, a paradox which, moreover, is very much in evidence in both of the reports under discussion; I congratulate the rapporteurs on their excellent work.
The truth is that while, on the one hand, enlargement is the greatest challenge which has ever faced this Community policy, it is easy, on the other, to discern a lacklustre and even reluctant political will to address the overwhelming need to revitalise this central plank of European integration. Instead of revitalising the policy, the talk is sometimes of renationalising it; instead of more resources and more solidarity, national self-interest rears its head. Despite this atmosphere, however, I have not yet lost hope of seeing visionary and unified political responses such as those given to the great European challenges of achieving the single internal market and Economic and Monetary Union.
Back then, at the time of each of those challenges, the resources dedicated to the economic and social cohesion policy were doubled. Now, at the time of enlargement, that ambition to deal with the enormous regional inequalities stemming from that enlargement is much needed, not least because cohesion policy will in future also have to confront the lack of cohesion still prevalent in the current fifteen-State European Union. This lack of cohesion risks becoming even more serious as a result of the dynamics introduced by enlargement and by the probably unfair distribution of its benefits. It makes perfect sense for the countries which will gain most from enlargement to contribute most to funding European solidarity. This is yet another hope founded on the stance adopted by the Commission and, in particular, by Commissioner Barnier, who, I am glad to say, has never ceased to believe, come rain or come shine, in the feasibility of an effective European-level economic and social cohesion policy, endowed with a minimum level of financial resources: simpler, less centralised, more effective and with other Community policies making a greater contribution towards the aims of cohesion; a cohesion policy which must improve the way it responds to the needs of island and mountainous regions, sparsely-populated regions and, of course, ultra-peripheral regions."@en1
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