Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-21-Speech-2-138"
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"en.20031021.5.2-138"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, changes, or new features, have clearly been added to the European budget for 2004: it has been described as a budget for a Europe of twenty-five, with a new nomenclature, based on activities, objectives and targets. This does not necessarily make the budget easier reading when, for example, we have 215 activities instead of the distinction previously made between administrative and operational expenditure.
Furthermore, we will soon also have the new feature that the distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure will be removed and, one of these days, we will see the budgetisation of the European Development Fund (EDF). When that day comes, however, will we in this House still be able to complete a discussion on the matter in two hours as well as take a vote on EUR 100 billion’s worth of spending?
There is, therefore, a deficit in budgetary democracy, ample proof of which is the fact that this Chamber is completely empty! There are also other budgetary deficits, first of all in the reliability of the forecasts. There are the figures for outstanding commitments: between EUR 6 billion and EUR 8 billion of unused appropriations each year, and this is a problem, especially when, on top of this, we do not have enough money to give to beekeepers, sheep farmers, fishermen, and so on. There is also a deficit in budgetary justice: year after year – this is a truism – Europe has its winners and its losers and they are always the same people! The Spain of Mr Aznar, who preaches to the whole world about budgetary balance, receives royalties worth EUR eight billion every year and without this income Spain would enjoy no budgetary balance at all. At the same time, other countries that form a majority, pay up – France and Germany, for example. In France, we lose between EUR 2 and EUR 4 billion every year, which is the equivalent of one TGV line every year! Something is clearly wrong!
There is also a deficit in the hierarchy of budgetary priorities: it is all well and good to earmark EUR 200 million for the reconstruction of Iraq, to give another EUR 200 million to Afghanistan, and EUR 240 million to Turkey to cover pre-accession costs, but should these really be priorities when the whole of Europe has only EUR 600 million in 2004, with which it can build the equivalent of a few kilometres of TGV line? Should we be spending EUR 640 million on Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq – which nobody forced us to destroy – when we cannot even build high-speed rail links or major transport networks?
The budget contains a perversion of solidarity, which in turn reveals a fourth deficit; a deficit of coherence. This is a Europe that, at Lisbon, stated its desire to be the number one world power in the field of knowledge, which Nikita Khrushchev wanted for his country as long ago as 1960, in order to beat the United States. This is a Europe of Erasmus Mundus, which wants to be a global university, a Europe of major works
Pericles, a Europe of universal external policy, a Shiva with one thousand arms, in Cotonou or Mercosur, in Asia, in South Africa, ‘everything but arms’, for the poor and even for the rich. And yet, this Europe of global dimensions has a truly provincial budget of EUR 100 billion, in other words, one per cent of its GDP, and this percentage is not increasing. Given the contradiction between these global ambitions and this laughable budget, the question is raised as to where the truth about Europe lies. The answer is to be found in the budgets: year after year, Europe churns out impressive-sounding speeches which, in reality, fall considerably short of what is needed."@en1
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