Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-05-Speech-2-177"
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"en.20050705.26.2-177"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe it is an exaggeration for me to describe European structural policy as being at the heart of the European Union, or to compare cuts in it with the sort of risky heart surgery which can go wrong, or can leave the patient disabled, and is therefore best avoided.
I would like to point out to the British Presidency something we all know, that being that a body without a heart is dead. Set your hand against structural policy, and you put the Community at risk. I wish again to call on all those present in the Chamber to organise the European Structural Funds in such a way that they play as fundamental a role in the body as the heart: the body is healthy if all its parts are well, if they live in solidarity with one another and deal fairly with one another, rather than using the resources available to them to compete with one another to the point of their mutual destruction.
For that to happen, though, resources need to be deployed sustainably, efficiently and from the bottom up, enabling the weakest to be made strong and an appropriate response to development problems. This House has produced a substantially better proposal than the Commission’s for how this might be done with the new Structural Funds. It is of the utmost importance that all its drafts give particular attention to the local level – as a recipient of support, as a programme level, and as a stakeholder.
I would therefore like again to stress the constant importance of the European Structural Funds when problems need to be addressed. Both in small villages and in the run-down neighbourhoods of major cities, they make Europe visible and tangible for the inhabitants and are for that reason indispensable to Europe’s integration. This is most apparent in the case of the European Social Fund, which Parliament’s substantial improvements have made into a ‘fund for the little people’, which springs into action where people are at risk of exclusion, gives support to those who have lost out, and inspiration where there is a need for innovation in the creation of jobs.
I would like to respond to what the Council Presidency has said by again emphasising the possibility of creating jobs even in regions that are already regarded as lost causes. This House’s amendments make the ESF a superb instrument for this purpose. Its conception runs directly counter to the idea that it is only by means of large-scale investments that competition can be fostered and jobs created. It intervenes where there is a need for knowledge and the potential for innovation at a regional level, and, as problem areas are no exception in this respect, it is there that it can bring success.
I would again like to emphasise that the Commission has done nothing to back up its claim that EQUAL was to be absorbed wholesale into the ESF. This makes Parliament’s amendments particularly important as a means of ensuring that the whole approach is taken on board in an innovative way.
I would like to conclude by saying something about the partnership principle. The Council’s attempt to abandon it is a full-frontal assault on the democratic nature of the Structural Funds, for it is control by society that ensures that money is not squandered and is actually put to use where it is needed. It follows that a greater emphasis on the partnership principle is vital to the Structural Funds. While we endorse the Commission’s proposal for the involvement of those partners who represent groups that are only now, and at last, gaining recognition in accordance with the anti-discrimination clause in the Treaty, these groups lack the know-how required in order to be able to deliver estimates and opinions as equal partners. I am again addressing the Commission when I say that we do not believe it to be wise to play gender mainstreaming off against such groups.
Let me again observe that the European Structural Funds can be successful only as and when they take due account of the sustainability principle."@en1
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