Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-22-Speech-2-163"
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"en.20050222.12.2-163"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I should like to start by saying, by way of an introduction, that I am fully aware that when acting in your capacity as Environment Commissioner you are following in the tradition of the Commission, a European institution. The comments I am about to make will therefore relate to the Commission, and not to you personally.
Firstly, it is my opinion that the reason why this House is having to deal with the problem of Natura 2000 is that the Commission has not had the courage to propose a suitable financial instrument. This is the first point I should like to make; in the Habitat Directive we committed ourselves to cofinancing and to the provision of funding, yet no corresponding provisions have been made in our various funds.
Neither, secondly, has the Commission had the courage to ensure that the existing regulations – the Structural Funds Regulation and the Rural Development Regulation – contain appropriate stipulations. They are full of ‘can’s’, ‘should’s’ and ‘could’s’, which is by no means adequate, or at least not in our opinion, and indeed we are all aware of where such language gets us. The intention is that regions in the Member States submit operational programmes, and the Commission then assesses and approves them. We are well aware of this, but there is no guarantee that what is written down will actually be read. In the current programming period, for example, the advancement of women’s concerns has been included as a goal in the Structural Funds Regulation, and indeed this was something for which Parliament fought strongly. The Member States, however, have reacted by doing next to nothing, and this is intolerable.
It is for this reason that we need a separate instrument to finance Natura 2000, and indeed this House has already agreed that a separate financial instrument is needed; one need only look at the individual committees’ opinions on the Financial Perspective. The Committee on Agriculture has already said that the protection of biodiversity is not a primary or genuine rural development policy. We all know what that means; our agriculture experts do not want to have to use money from rural development funds to pay for Natura 2000 either."@en1
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