Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-02-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20030902.1.2-038"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, first of all I wish everyone a pleasant beginning to the working year and let us hope it gets off to a rewarding start. Hopefully we all realised during the summer that there is life outside Parliament too.
Now is the time, however, to ask ourselves honestly whether current regional policy meets real needs. I do not believe the policy should continue along the current lines with only minor changes being made. Parliament has stressed that 0.45% of the Union’s GDP should be used to finance this policy. How on earth, though, did we arrive at precisely that figure? First we should survey the regions’ needs and the most cost-effective means by which those needs may be met. It is not prudent to commit to any fixed sum in advance. Obviously, you can pour however much you like into something like this, but is it wise?
Naturally, we still need a responsible EU regional policy. Is it sensible, however, to share out aid among all the regions with each one getting just a few crumbs, and at enormous administrative cost? We should consider Britain’s proposal that there should only be support for the EU’s poorest regions. In practice this would mean that only the new Member States would receive aid. Other regional aids would be nationalised, so that EU bureaucracy may be avoided. I would nevertheless like to emphasise that the current Member States would not lose out under the reform, as, with enlargement, aids will diminish dramatically in any case. Naturally, the contributions of the present Member States would be reduced by the amount of reduced aids.
Any major change such as this still unfortunately comes up against a brick wall regarding policy. Politicians’ favourite occupation has always been to dole out other people’s money. Funds of money held jointly, however, should be handled even more carefully than our own, as wasting money in any way is always taking it away from the most deprived members of society. If we are going to make the EU a dynamic area, as we said we would at Lisbon, we should understand that money does not grow on trees, not even in this age of GMOs. Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we owe it to those who vote for us to act honestly and in accordance with their long-term interests."@en1
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