Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-20-Speech-2-241"
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"en.20040420.9.2-241"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, we politicians who deal with budgetary affairs can look back today on five years of successful cooperation. The budget for the year 2000, the first for which we were jointly responsible, was also the first budget to be drawn up under the current system of financial planning. After five years of shared experience of the financial perspective as a planning instrument, we now have a welcome opportunity to discuss this experience in terms of its implications for the next planning period.
Thanks to very close cooperation among the institutions in recent years, our record has been good. And you, Mr Wynn, have been a magnificent chairman of the Committee on Budgets and have led the committee very, very successfully. You were, however, also fortunate in having very good committee members, who have been professional, competent and – an essential attribute in any politician involved in budgetary matters – extremely hardworking. The same applies to the bureau of the committee.
We have achieved a lot, thanks to excellent cooperation. It was a very good experience in every way. I am extremely grateful to you.
Our experience shows that the planning instrument has proved well able to guarantee the orderly development of expenditure and its funding. In particular, the instrument of the interinstitutional agreement, with its consultation and cooperation mechanisms, has also managed to ensure that the discussion process is efficiently conducted and is concluded in good time. On the other hand, experience has also shown that a greater degree of flexibility is desirable, that the ceiling for expenditure on foreign policy was simply set too low and that the capping of administrative expenditure is liable to create its own problems. The beneficial effects of the Financial Perspective derive from its capacity to foster mutual trust between the institutions and to promote compromise. In this respect I fully endorse what the Chairman, Mr Wynn, has said.
This very point is also an argument in favour of synchronising the duration of the Financial Perspective with the mandate of Parliament and the Commission – in other words, limiting it to five years. The Commission agrees in principle with the Committee on Budgets here. The Commission, however, has proposed a further seven-year period as a transitional phase for many reasons, which I do not wish to recapitulate here. Perhaps there is room for a compromise, such as an arrangement whereby the support programmes for which the Commission is currently drafting the legal basis would not have their budgets fixed at this stage for all seven years.
If we want to ensure that all the legal bases can be adopted in 2006, there is simply not enough time to wait for the new Commission to create them. It goes without saying, however, that the new Commission will be able to assert its own priorities in the consultation process.
The Financial Perspective establishes the financial framework for the policies that will be pursued over the next few years. It is a highly significant political project, which is why the consultations must be preceded by an agreement as to which tasks the Union intends to perform collectively in the future. That, indeed, is the way in which the Irish Presidency has addressed this matter, and I should like to take this opportunity to offer a most emphatic vote of thanks for the manner in which you are dealing with this dossier and with the Commission’s proposal at the present time.
Our common aims are ambitious: sustainable growth, greater competitiveness through enhanced support for science, research and education, the development of a European Union area of freedom, security and justice for our citizens, the assumption of more joint responsibility in the world and the successful integration of the new Member States. The new framework will apply to an EU of 27 Member States.
The Commission proposes that all of this be funded within the present ceiling for the Union’s own resources. We are not proposing an increase in the ceiling, even though the present limit has remained constant since 1999. We are even proposing a far greater flexibility margin below this ceiling of 1.24% of gross national income than the one proposed by the previous Commission for the present planning period. If we compare the figures from the current financial plans with those in the Commission’s new proposal for the years 2007 to 2013, it emerges that our proposed ceiling for this next planning period works out at an average of 1.14% of gross national income, while the current average is in the order of 1.12% if the EDF and the Solidarity Fund are included. If the European Development Fund and the Solidarity Fund were removed from the equation – as they are in the figures for the new period – and the values for the present period were recalculated on the basis of 25 Member States, the result would actually be a slight reduction in the percentage of gross national income to be levied in the coming years under the Commission’s new proposal compared with the present planning period.
How has it been possible for us, in spite of this ambitious agenda, to remain below the said ceiling? The only reason, of course, is that the Commission has reallocated funds from old to new tasks. For example, the percentage of the budget devoted to agricultural expenditure will decrease, while the allocation to sustainable growth will increase. Reallocations are proposed between the old and the new Member States. If we examine the Commission’s proposals for the forthcoming planning period for the old Member States alone, we see that they fall well below the ceiling of 1.0% of gross national income requested by some of the Member States. If, however, we were to set a ceiling of 1.0% for the enlarged Union of 27 Member States, we should have to forego the pursuit of entire policies, and the catalogue of objectives adopted by the Council and ourselves would then become unattainable.
Over the past few years, we have done much to consolidate the budget, far more than has been done in the Member States. The budgets of recent years, the budgets for which we have been jointly responsible, may be regarded as the lowest in the history of European financial perspectives. The amounts of expenditure flowing to the current Member States have been reduced in order to create, within the limits of the current ceiling, sufficient financial capacity for the accession of new Member States. In the realm of budgetary policy, we are well prepared for enlargement. We have a new up-to-date budgetary system, and we have a new budgetary structure which is far more transparent and far more political."@en1
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