Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-109"
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"Mr President, may I start by extending warm congratulations to you, Mr Ouzký, on your first appearance here as Vice-President of the European Parliament. I am very indebted to you and your Members for the many interesting remarks as well as remarks concerning content that have been made. I have also heard many critical and anxious comments from you. I think that that is the start of an interesting debate which we will be continuing later on in the year. I should like to give a first reaction to a number of important remarks, although I will have to keep it brief.
With regard to payment appropriations, a number of you have already drawn our attention to them, understandably so, particularly Mr Garriga who was the first to do so. He was also the first to level critical remarks with regard to the proposals on the part of the Council concerning those of the Commission, but I gather that he has already had a response in a way, even if unintended, by Mr Seppänen, I hope I pronounce your name correctly, who noted that before 2003, five billion was returned, and I can assure him and you, Mr President and fellow Members, that five billion has been returned before. If we talk about returns to the tune of ten billion, then I think that this puts a slightly different complexion on the remark about payment appropriations.
Many of you were right to mention the importance of new priorities, new countries and solidarity. That is why I set such great store by this emphatic statement not to meddle with agreements and the just expectations that are nurtured in this respect.
A number of you, including Mr Ferber and Mr Mulder, mentioned the subject of agriculture. Here again, the same applies, and I should like to hammer my message home once more: it goes without saying that agreements or farmers’ and cultivators’ rights are not tampered with. As Mr Mulder said quite rightly, we will be receiving the latest figures in October, but we will always fulfil our obligation in this respect. A number of you, including Mr Garriga and Mrs Jensen, have also flagged the agencies as an area of concern.
For a moment, I was reminded of the fact that earlier last year, the European Parliament was, in fact, concerned about extra spending for those agencies, and Parliament now appears to be anxious, at least for a number of hours, about not having enough funding. Certainly where the new agencies are concerned, I think that we have tabled a very solid proposal for the activities of those agencies.
The flexibility instrument has been mentioned, mainly in connection with the importance of external policy. You will agree with me that the core of the flexibility instrument is that it accommodates unexpected and unforeseen circumstances, and does not, therefore, provide for matters that can be planned ahead. I think it is crucial, and also in everyone’s interest, if we were to keep this instrument for that purpose and not deploy the flexibility instrument in the way as it was proposed earlier for external policy, being the entire category, the entire external policy in respect of which Mr Lewandowski and others made critical and anxious comments. I share their anxieties to a certain degree, because we did not enjoy making cutbacks in this category, even less in this one than in other categories, given the responsibility which we as Europe, and I very much agree with the comments that have been made, increasingly have in the world.
On the other hand, as you have seen, we have made important exceptions in our proposal to this cutback, the key priority, of course, being ‘Iraq’ and the common foreign and security policy in general. I should like to put this into perspective to some degree, because if you consider the development of this budget over the last few years, there is an enormous increase in this very category.
Finally, some MEPs have made comments, direct or indirect, about the new financial perspectives. I will not go into any more detail because fortunately, we have an informal meeting after this session to talk this over with your coordinators of all groups in this Parliament, as we have also agreed in the conciliation to inform you in the correct manner, but let me make one comment in this respect, because a number of your Members have mooted this point, the 1% letter, the approach of this presidency. Rest assured, we may be here as Dutch people, but we are not acting on our own behalf but as the Presidency of the European Union, which means that it is our responsibility to make the best possible progress in reaching agreement in the Council, at least where the principles and guidelines for the following multi-annual budget at the end of this year are concerned.
In this respect, we as presidency have precisely opted for an approach which steers clear of being proven right or wrong about the 1%, and which moves into the direction of the discussion as to where our priorities and, I should like to add, our posteriorities are. I should like to take this opportunity to say this in reaction to comments. In this way, we hope to establish what is termed a ‘building blocks’ approach, an open discussion on content, just as, in fact, a start has already, in my view, been made with your Parliament today.
I think that Mr Lewandowski may well have started off with one of the most fundamental remarks when he made reference to what the citizens of Europe expect from us and from this budget – just look at the latest European parliamentary elections – and he mentioned the, to my mind, central concept of ‘added value’. This is the very thing which the Council is trying to achieve: by means of this budget, to give substance to the added value which Europe can have, the added value compared to what is happening elsewhere, to what is happening nationally, in the best possible way. Nevertheless, judging from his comments, he and the Council do not agree on every score on the question as to how this added value should be viewed.
I do not think that added value is primary for European citizens, or that the highest possible level of funding is brought into Europe and subsequently returned to those citizens for good causes. I think that the greatest concern, though, where the added value of citizens in Europe is concerned, is the fact that this is being handled at European level, rather than it being organised at a lower level nationally or otherwise. That is in any event a guideline for us, the Council, with regard to this budget, and it also says something about what is not on the agenda now but has been mentioned by a few of your Members, namely the new financial perspectives.
I do not agree with Mr Lewandowski when he suggests that we, in our proposals – the Council’s draft proposal compared to the Commission’s proposals – would have mainly used the ‘cheese slicer method’, as we put it in the Netherlands, that we would have made use of generic cutbacks across the line. I think that, chiefly, we have made choices in this budget, in respect of which you can beg to differ, but they are at least choices, and they have by no means been easy choices for the Council.
Mr Garriga made an interesting observation with his comparison between the increase of national budgets over a number of years and the increase of the European budget. His position was that, in that light, the European budget increases had been far lower than the national budget ones over a number of years. If you look into this in more detail, I agree that this can also lead to a different insight. Indeed, the last few years, particularly since the economic recession from 2000 onwards, give a totally different picture of the national budget. Suffice to mention the discussion about the Stability Pact for you to know what I mean.
Secondly, in response to the – in itself very interesting – comparison that Mr Garriga made, I should like to say that the national governments naturally have responsibilities which the European Union does not have and which are linked to increases, such as social security, health care and education. That is a completely different budget from the European budget where agricultural spending still accounts for nearly half of the budget and structural policy spending for nearly 30%. I should like to vehemently deny the general criticism levelled by a number of your Members, to the effect that the Council had acted as an accountant. I would, in fact, claim the opposite, because we have definitely not acted as accountants, but as politicians, as politically responsible, by making choices that were, as I said before, not easy to make. I can obviously only applaud the fact that we in the Council act counter to your views and, as Mrs Trüpel stated, are dealing with a very independent Parliament.
Nevertheless, I cannot resist saying that in my view, politics is not only about formulating priorities, but also always about having the nerve to formulate posteriorities, and we as politicians know that, in general, that is more difficult than anything else, but it is, in my view, necessary in order to be able to reach financial prioritisation. In that sense, I hope that some of your Members have not suggested any kind of opposition here where the responsibility is concerned which we, as legs of the budgetary authority, you as Parliament and we as Council, feel for all citizens of Europe, whereby we as Council give due consideration to the economic situation of a recession, the fact that choices must definitely be made and the fact that we largely view this added value, as stated in a reaction to Mr Lewandowski’s speech, as part of the added value of European efforts compared to national efforts.
Which brings me to an example that Mrs Trüpel quoted, namely that the enormous importance of culture and of cultural policy does not mean that this should be dealt with at European level. It is not the case, in my view, that the more important an area is, the more European it should be. What is still at issue is at what level added value can be provided most effectively.
I should like to flag a few essential points mentioned by speakers on your side. Let me start with the remark made by Commissioner Schreyer, and indeed a number of your Members have mentioned this point, namely structural funds, and the communication which Commissioner Schreyer made, that the level of depletion is positively higher than could previously be assumed. In fact, she also mentioned the discussion about company tax and her objection to a link being made between that discussion and the structural policy discussion. Let me state emphatically that, firstly, we are obviously awaiting the further Commission proposal on this subject and secondly, this Council and this presidency abide by their guiding principle, and will do so in future, namely that we leave expenditure for the new Member States intact and equally, that we leave the agreements that have been struck on this subject in Copenhagen intact."@en1
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