Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-264"
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"en.20030924.7.3-264"2
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"Madam President, Trans-European Networks (TENs) are a bit like the Loch Ness monster of the European Union. Whenever the European economy is faring badly, we are entitled to a debate on TENs. The Commission, however, and the Council even more so, are behaving like an opera chorus. They are singing ‘Let us march, let us march’, while jumping up and down on the spot. One report on TENs follows another, but the projects adopted advance at the speed of a funeral cortege.
The fact is that every economy lives by its infrastructures. Trade and the internal market need these cross-border networks. Europe is cruelly lacking investment in the railways, piggyback transport, motorways, waterways, ports and airports. We are lacking interconnected gas and electricity networks. Often, infrastructure decisions collide with ecological considerations. It is no longer politics that decide: it is ultimately the administrative courts. Sustainable development, however, cannot be achieved without economic and social development, full stop. Nor is the lack of transport infrastructures and the permanent traffic jams, the traffic congestion, in the interest of sustainable development. How can we implement the Lisbon strategy without consistent investment in infrastructure? What is more, these investments, as I have just said, are also in the interests of sustainable mobility.
Madam President, Europe needs to give itself the resources to match its ambitions. It is not enough to make the European Investment Bank contribute; it does not have unlimited resources. Why not take up Jacques Delors' idea of funding TENs with a Community loan? Borrowing to invest, to create the conditions of future sustainable growth, should be an objective common to all true Europeans.
Europe is suffocating under its contradictions. We manifest a will to become the most competitive economy in the world, but real policy gets lost in parochial considerations. We need stability, but without growth there will be neither stability nor full employment. The United States is much more pragmatic. The US federal deficit for the current year alone is equal to more than five European Union annual budgets. While the Americans are investing 3% of their GDP in infrastructure, we are hovering around a miserly 1%. The requirements for projects under way or planned are EUR 400 billion. The requirements identified by the Van Miert Group have been estimated at EUR 600 billion. Up to now, Community funding has been in the order of EUR 15 billion. Clearly, therefore, there is a huge gulf between the objectives announced and the actual efforts made."@en1
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