Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-21-Speech-2-125"
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"en.20031021.5.2-125"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I have followed the work of the budget rapporteurs, Mr Jan Mulder and Mrs Neena Gill, carefully on behalf of my group. I want to thank them for their diligence and the transparent way in which they have worked, even though our conclusions for next year’s budget are not the same in all respects.
Our group would have liked Mr Mulder to meet us halfway in Category 4 of the budget so that our proposal for appropriations for Palestine and East Timor could have been adopted. The serious problems of the Middle East have had too little attention paid to them in the debate on next year’s budget.
Not everybody in our group likes Mrs Gill’s proposal to take an appropriation from the budget to start support for European political parties using Parliament’s funds. Many in our group feel that support for European parties will only restrict democracy, not increase it. That way the big parties in the big countries could subjugate the small parties in the small countries. I would focus your attention on the fact that the Council deleted the clause in the regulations governing the parties which said that a European party could not provide funds for national parties in national elections. Now it can, and this means European taxpayers’ money will be spent on national election propaganda.
On the other hand, we support the ideas put forward by Mrs Gill on the committee regarding how necessary it is to make the work of the European Parliament more efficient. For example, the excess on the allowances for Parliament’s car service this year must be looked into carefully, and next year we cannot introduce a new system for claiming expenses for the use of taxis without a decision made in plenary. We also have to make a determined effort to endorse the Members’ Statute, so that we can do away with a system that allows travel expenses to be claimed for no clear reason.
Most of all our group criticises the EUR 500 million appropriation in next year’s budget for the reconstruction of Iraq passed in the committee by a vote by the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats. That is not solidarity aid for Iraq, but for the United States of America. The Right in Europe seems to be lying prostrate before the United States. It wants to share in the costs of the US oil war in a way that greatly exceeds the need for aid set at EUR 200 million, as proposed by the Commission. By this means, the Right wants to use tax revenue from the citizens of the EU to support America’s illegal war, America’s illegal occupation and the puppet government America has set up in Iraq. Our group is prepared to discuss the Commission’s proposals to assist Iraq, but we reject the PPE-DE Group’s political gesture to President Bush and his war coalition.
Other representatives of our group will adopt a position on problems relating to the Structural Funds in their speeches."@en1
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