Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-20-Speech-4-021"
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"en.20031120.1.4-021"2
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"Mr President, the Community action programme to promote active European citizenship uses a pretentious name to camouflage a nefarious scheme to legitimise illegal subsidies granted by the Commission to its cronies.
In fact, subsidies have been paid for many years to associations with an allegedly ‘European mission’ without any legal basis. They are often concealed among the appropriations made under Part A of the budget, in other words they are merged, with the aid of creative accounting, into the administrative expenditure of the Commission. Every year we protest against the selective granting of these subsidies to organisations promoting a federal Europe – the Jean Monnet Association, the International European Movement, diverse federalist think-tanks, etc. Every year we have refused to vote for them. Every year an overwhelming majority of this House has approved their renewal. Now, following observations made by the Court of Auditors – and oh, how justified they were – the new Financial Regulation that entered into force in 2002 requires the specification of a legal basis – which, of course, does not exist. Hence the proposal presented by the Commission today, which is designed to provide this basis for some of these outgoings, packaged together into what is called the ‘Community action programme to promote active European citizenship’. This approach speaks volumes about Community customs and practices, and indeed the comments it evokes could fill several books. I shall confine myself to six of these comments.
Firstly, even if a legal basis were provided now, what would be done about the subsidies that have been paid in the past without any legal basis? Secondly, it is a complete mockery to launch an action programme defining objectives on the basis of which grant applications will be assessed when everyone knows full well from the outset which associations will ultimately be selected. Thirdly, the subsidised associations have a European mission, at least as defined by the Commission. The others are, by definition, anti-European. When will the Council intervene in this business, either to stop all these subsidies or to distribute them equitably among associations with different visions of the future of Europe? Fourthly, the European institutions are meanwhile trying to establish a system for the funding of the self-styled European political parties from the public purse. As these subsidies pile up, do you not think that taxpayers will eventually have had their fill of this recklessness? Fifthly, the list of eligible associations contained in the report reveals a motley assortment of organisations, many of which have nothing to do with European citizenship, such as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. In addition, since it is all so simple, the European Parliament could not resist adding to this list through its amendments. I also wonder, by the way, about the Association of the Councils of State and Supreme Administrative Jurisdictions of the European Union. How can it be that an association of leading judges who are supposed to be part of an entirely independent judiciary can receive money to promote active European citizenship? My sixth and final point is that the only legal basis which anyone was able to find for this programme was Article 308 of the Treaty Establishing the European Union, the selfsame wretched article that we have often tried to have repealed, because it provides the Community with scope to stretch the limits of its powers. The report presented today will not change our minds on that point. It is true, however, that the said article requires the Council to act unanimously, and so I ask the following question: will there be a single government that is honest enough to oppose this concocted programme in the Council, a programme whose underlying principles are tinged with totalitarianism, because a sense of European citizenship, ladies and gentlemen, should be spontaneous, born of affection for Europe, for the European Union and its achievements. It is not manufactured with the aid of subsidies."@en1
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