Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-01-Speech-3-080"
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"en.20041201.11.3-080"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I am glad to be able to greet you again so soon and to be dealing with you. As many have said, what we are dealing with now is one of the greatest challenges we face, second only to the annual deliberations on the Budget.
If one is to accept such a great challenge, one already associated with such bellicose language and accompanied – in that figures have already been produced for our consideration – by the opening of many secondary theatres of war, it is a good thing to keep a cool head and work through things in a systematic fashion. I can assure you that there are many in this House who will approach this matter with a calm mind, rather than allowing themselves to be distracted. Our task is to see to it that this House is sufficiently involved, and we will of course insist on that through the proper channels and press the point if the need to do so arises.
My colleagues and I are very grateful to you, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, for having refrained from playing games with numbers and for having adopted a ‘building block’ approach, which focuses attention on matters of substance. You have said that we have to closely examine the individual policy areas in order to see what we can actually do, and what we want for Europe in the future, and the work you are doing reflects that. We will work in parallel with you and make proposals where necessary, hoping that you will take account of them in your calculations during the process rather than only when it is drawing to a close.
There will inevitably be many questions in our own minds, those being the questions raised by the European policy of the future, and the public demand answers to them. We will, in future, have new tasks to take upon ourselves, and we will also have to talk about whether the existing policies as set down to date were shaped in the right way.
We will not be abandoning principles, and one that we do not believe can be abandoned is that of cohesion in this Europe of ours. It is in areas such as this, for example, that there is discussion as to whether we want to make universal provision – as we have done in the past – or whether we want to promote lighthouses and centres of growth. This we will have to discuss with you, and a discussion of this kind, dealing with details and substance, calls for courage. It will demand courage of the Council, for it is the Council that will have to say when certain things are to be sold to the public as European tasks, one example being the reinforcement of security in the wake of 11 September, and another being cooperation in the foreign policy sphere, for which funding will be needed. We, Members of the European Parliament, will also need the courage to repatriate to the national level certain things that are not best performed at European level. We will have to have a debate about this.
I would like to give brief consideration to the issue of duration, which two speakers have already addressed. The fact is that the seven years we are talking about – a period running until 2013 – amounts to nine years from today. Just bear in mind that it is for a period of nine years that we will be making estimates; nine years ago, Michael Jackson’s
was number one in the hit parades, the word ‘euro’ had only just been invented, and it was nine years ago that Austria, Sweden and Finland joined the European Union. That was nine years ago! As we now have to talk in terms of that sort of period running into the future, I do think we have to watch out. We should in fact be putting this duration back under the microscope. Four years or three years would be something else. It was four years ago that we adopted the Treaty of Nice. That is a manageable period of time, so let us talk about the periods for which the Financial Perspective might run.
Let us also, though, discuss the issue of flexibility, which we need. The European Union’s development is not linear; we need change. Over past months, we have had, again and again, to make use of the flexibility instrument. You know every bit as well as we do that discussion of that is on the agenda.
I also want to address the issue of the revenue side, for an MEP cannot be happy to be always given the task of maximising expenditure, that being assumed to be the only thing we are interested in. Such is not the case! If we are to talk in terms of net contributors and net burdens, we want to know whether the engines pulling us are capable of having more wagons attached to them until they are incapable of moving, or how we can raise the money. So something else we want to discuss with you is the mechanisms that the revenue side requires, and what I would like you to tell us is whether you are willing to have us involved over and above the extent specified in the Treaty, whether you are willing to talk to us and take us seriously where expenditure and revenue are concerned, or whether that is where you want us to be completely detached. If you want results, I can do no other than urge you to cooperate with us. We will have to fight it out among ourselves at various points along the way, but I do believe that results are achieved when self-confident people deal with one another, each of them knowing what he is capable of and what is expected of him."@en1
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"Earth Song"1
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