Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-26-Speech-2-179"

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"en.20041026.12.2-179"2
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"Mr President, I represent a party that entered Parliament this year. We do not believe that we can approve the 2005 budget. We believe that the expenditure is too high, with the commitments amounting to 1.14% of gross domestic income. This budget should form the basis for future financial planning, and we believe that it could have been more restrictive. There are many areas in which savings could have been made. That being said, we of course have nothing against re-prioritising within the framework set up by the Commission and the Council. There are many instances of re-prioritising for which there are good reasons. We naturally think, however, that it is important for strict limits to be placed upon agricultural subsidies. As Mrs Schreyer said, these constitute 55% of the budget, and that is quite unreasonable. I know that it is not in accordance with the Treaty, but our development proposal involves, of course, reducing agricultural subsidies considerably and instead using the money for new initiatives. We argue in favour of a percentage of gross domestic income as our objective. This is not a block on reform, but a demand for re-prioritisation. Nor do we think that the Lisbon strategy should be the basis for trying to procure significantly increased expenditure by the EU. We believe, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, that growth is a supremely national issue that is not promoted by increased EU expenditure and taxes. That is not the route to increased growth. We therefore reject the very cornerstone of the thinking behind the budget. I shall not go into all the details of the re-prioritising. All that must be discussed. We need a much clearer link between those who propose expenditure and those who have responsibility for arranging the funding and collecting taxpayers’ money. To me, it seems as if Parliament is pushing for expenditure without accepting the political responsibility for demanding further tax revenue. In the long term, it is not a good division of labour to have one body that proposes expenditure and another whose task it is to obtain the money. That is from where the tensions arise."@en1

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