Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-14-Speech-2-159"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20041214.12.2-159"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, this year’s mobilisation of the flexibility instrument is closely connected with the success of the Budget consultations and the agreement that we concluded – as we indeed needed to – between the institutions. Let me say, Mr President-in-Office, in retrospect, how good it is that at that time, in 1999, Parliament secured this flexibility instrument following laborious negotiations, for it has been very much to the benefit of the Council’s priorities when implementing past years’ Budgets.
Let me once again remind you that the flexibility instrument, the annual upper limit of which the May 1999 agreement set at EUR 200 million, is intended to deal with unforeseen eventualities, and also that heading 24 of the Interinstitutional Agreement states that, as a rule, this flexibility instrument should not be applied for one and the same purpose in two successive financial years. Before this flexibility instrument is made use of, there does of course have to be a motion to that effect, and there has to be examination of whether new unforeseen measures are to be funded within a heading or, where this is impossible, by shifts between one heading and another, which is to be followed by discussion of whether the flexibility instrument is to be applied.
We go through this procedure almost every year, and what we have actually learned from the experience is that the interpretation put on this flexibility has sometimes placed it under some considerable strain. I would draw attention to this year’s result, which is that we have EUR 185 million at our disposal, EUR 45 million for the Peace II programme, EUR 40 million for the agencies – which are obviously among the Council’s really important priorities and are always threatening to displace important programmes in heading III, which yield added value for Europe – and EUR 100 million for the reconstruction of Iraq.
It is with specific reference to this that I want to point out that, in the current 2004 Budget, out of a total of EUR 90 million for Iraq, EUR 74 million have – as I recall – already been funded in 2004 with the aid of the flexibility instrument. That manifestly borders on the indefensible. As a rule, that should not be done. For that reason, I believe we would be very well advised, in the debate on the new Financial Perspective and the flexibility it calls for, to draw on the experience we have had of the use of the flexibility instrument over the past years. Let me take this opportunity to say that we are talking here, overall, in terms of payments from the 2005 Budget of EUR 106.3 billion and EUR 200 million allowed for flexibility.
What is interesting about this year is that, for the first time, not only does heading IV – foreign policy – benefit from the use of the flexibility instrument, but also headings II and III necessarily benefit from what we have negotiated. The ultimate result of this, and what might be called an additional result, is that the Agreement has also made it possible – in a sort of legal/budgetary emergency operation – to incorporate EUR 120 million worth of funding for Northern Cyprus under heading VII and to add EUR 10 million to the funding for the common foreign and security policy, bringing it up to EUR 62.5 million.
Mr President, please allow me to make a final comment: our experience and the virtually annual debate on the use of the flexibility instrument must surely make it clear to both the Council and to Parliament, as they debate the new Financial Perspective, that the longer we set the Financial Perspectives for – be it 2007 to 2013 or whatever – and the longer the period for which the amounts are laid down, the more likely it is that we will need more flexibility to deal with the unexpected in coming years and will have to demand this of the Council in the negotiations on the Financial Perspectives."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples