Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-176"
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"Mr President, allow me a few moments to thank the Chairman of the Committee for his kind words and to express my thanks for your kind words and the applause and congratulations I have received from many of my colleagues who came here today knowing that this would probably be my last speech to the Assembly from these benches.
We must ask ourselves whether or not these figures are hiding reductions in the so-called political priorities and – I stress – agriculture and the Structural Funds.
Ladies and gentlemen, we should all remind the Commission and the Council that because of the Council’s systematic refusal, the perspectives have not been included in the Treaty until now. Therefore, until the Constitution enters into force in the terms approved by the Convention, we are under no obligation to sign this agreement or to approve any package for the financial perspective. I hope that the Irish Presidency takes note of this with a view to moving the Constitution forward as quickly as possible.
I will not go into any further detail regarding the duration, but I would like to raise a couple of technical questions. What are the consequences of reducing the number of headings to five but increasing the number of subheadings? What rules govern the transfer of money or appropriations from one subheading to another? If we have a financial perspective, what form will the flexibility mechanism take exactly? Moreover, we have a figure of 1.24% but it is vital to clarify the concepts of payment appropriations, commitment appropriations, and the vague reference to gross domestic product, gross national product and to gross national income. These are questions that, I should mention in passing, could mean a difference of EUR 7 000 million.
In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, the progress of European integration in a united and enlarged Europe requires generosity and a broad-minded approach, and it seems that our ambitions far outnumber resources.
I must say that for someone who started their political career in the anti-fascist underground, at the age of 18, the opportunity to be here in the European Parliament has been an unforgettable experience. I look on my 18 years in the European Parliament as a privilege and I would like to thank all of my colleagues, the Bureau, and in particular my colleagues in the Committee on Budgets and all of the officials and co-workers with whom I have worked during this time.
If you miss me, in any event, my new role does not allow me to be paid, as you know, so I can advise you ‘free of charge’. Having said that, allow me to move on to the topic in hand.
For the last time as rapporteur for the financial perspective, I can say that at last we have the promised Commission communication on one of the key issues affecting the European Union in the years ahead. Until very recently, last Friday in fact, we only knew of it by means of press leaks and rough drafts and had had practically no official notification of it until the tripartite dialogue held in Dublin.
The Commission’s speeches, and especially that of Mr Prodi, have given us a more positive image than the text we had seen to date, with which I disagreed due to some of its apocalyptic tones. In my opinion, we have to have a more positive vision and I think that that must be our approach to addressing the problems and proposals for action in order to ensure economic growth in the Union in the years ahead.
I am afraid, however, that once again we are beginning to build the house from the roof down or, to be more precise, from the ceiling down. We are starting
from a maximum ceiling for the budget within which we are trying to fit the policies, rather than looking at the policies and the funding they require and determining the extent to which the resources needed to finance them are available.
As far as I am concerned, the Commission has to some extent fallen into the trap of ‘the gang of six’: the Treasury Ministers who call themselves ‘net contributors’, who have proposed staying within 1% of the ceiling for the financial perspective. I believe that the most fundamental negotiating tactic required us to go further than that and to be more ambitious, and not to stay within the limits set by the Commission – itself and the budget authorities – in 1992 to meet the needs of a European Community that at that stage had 12 members. That is the percentage they want us to retain. I think it shows a lack of ambition.
We want to increase the competitiveness of the economy, fulfil the Lisbon objectives, maintain the cohesion policy, finance enlargement, and solve the statistical problems concerning the flows to the poorest regions of the current 15 Member States. We want to have a foreign policy, a security policy, perhaps a defence policy too, an R[amp]D policy, and so on, but where will the money come from? I feel it is important that at last the proposal to include a European tax has been included, but still…"@en1
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