Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-23-Speech-2-166"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030923.5.2-166"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I am very pleased that this debate is taking place as it enables us to put a number of questions to the Commission before we vote on the amendments in the budgetary procedure. In my first contribution of the afternoon, I would like to pause, as Mr Virrankoski did, at the implementation of the budget, as the political decisions which we take here with a lot of fuss often falter on that point. Money is shelved, or red tape hinders recipients of subsidies from spending the money properly and effectively. Mr Mulder, the rapporteur for the forthcoming budget, said just now that he wanted the Commission to be encouraged to increase the percentage of the money spent by putting part of the administrative credits in the reserve. Mr Mulder, and also possibly a majority in this House, are not yet convinced that all the items that the Commission asked for before enlargement are really necessary. A Commission official said the following in this regard: you are tying our legs together and still expecting us to be able to run the 100 metres faster.
I think that the rapporteur’s concerns are legitimate, but I have doubts as to the means. I would therefore like to ask the Commissioner whether she can give us her opinion on this. What are the consequences of the reserves? How can you use them in a positive way? Even more importantly, do you think that we are on the right track by spending the money slowly? Up to now we have always put the emphasis on the quantitative side of this. Is it not time we focused more on the qualitative side of the solutions, like Mr Pittella is doing with the structural funds? That means that procedures would have to be simplified, that we would need less paper and more responsible officials.
My last point with regard to spending the money properly concerns the fact that we often find that projects that are financed with EU resources often do not respect European environmental legislation. What happens when you discover this? Will the money be frozen or will some other more-or-less soft solution be found? One example of this is the bridge over the Tagus River. This was a project financed with EU funds in which the bird and habitat directives were not respected. There are more examples like this. I would like to know what the consequences are if it is discovered that EU-financed projects are violating EU legislation."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples