Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-141"
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"en.20050927.18.2-141"2
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"Mr President, the Guellec report does not impress me, for three reasons.
First of all, the EU has no power in the field of spatial planning, yet it presumes to chart a course for this on the back of the dead Constitution. That is wrong and it shows utter contempt for the electors of Europe, not least the electors of Mr Guellec's own country, who handsomely rejected the Constitution.
Secondly, territorial cohesion is clearly being advanced for the political objective of bypassing and downgrading the entity of the nation–state. It aims for territorial integration. There are obvious political and constitutional issues here, which are perhaps more obvious to me, given where I come from, than to some others. I do not want my part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, treated instead as part of the territorial whole of the island of Ireland. That would offend and it would defy the settled political will of Northern Ireland's people. The EU must act within the constraints and parameters of that reality.
Thirdly, within the context of cohesion funding, talk of territorial cohesion in my region is somewhat ironic, since we were excluded from cohesion funding from its inception, while our neighbour in the Irish Republic was included. The real route to cohesion was equality of access to funding, but that was denied to Northern Ireland, while the south of Ireland benefited to the tune of over EUR 2 billion for its infrastructure.
Thus, it is so much nonsense to now talk grandly about securing equality of treatment between territories. The EU had its chance to give such equality of funding to Northern Ireland for necessary infrastructure but it failed, by making national statistics instead of regional need the threshold for access."@en1
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