Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-24-Speech-1-057"
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"en.20051024.14.1-057"2
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".
Mr President, may I express my warmest thanks to the rapporteur, Mrs Pack; to the Committee on Culture and Education, and to all who contributed to this excellent report. I would like to thank Mrs Pack in particular for the commitment and expertise she has brought to the report.
Finally, in order for the programme to start on time, the decision needs to be made and adopted as soon as possible in 2006. I know this is a challenging timetable and depends very much on the timing of an agreement on the Financial Perspective, but I can assure you the Commission will do everything it can to help this Parliament and the Council reach agreement rapidly.
In the present political climate our policies need more than ever to be directly relevant to citizens’ real needs. Education and training is where the benefits of European integration are directly felt by millions of citizens. Therefore, I am very grateful also for Mr Böge’s report for the temporary committee on the financial perspective. It is an important statement of support in a difficult financial context. My thanks are due also to the rapporteurs of the other committees that contributed opinions on this Commission proposal.
Let me comment briefly on the amendments proposed in this report. I am pleased to say that the Commission is able to accept, either word for word or in substance, 39 of the 79 amendments proposed by Parliament. These changes improve the text, either by introducing new elements and priorities or by clarifying existing ones.
There are 16 amendments which, I regret, the Commission cannot accept because they either go beyond Community competence or are not compatible with the structure of the programme, four of which relate to the Parliament’s resolution.
That leaves a further 20 amendments which raise some substantial issues on which I would like to comment. Regarding amendments which derogate from the Financial Regulation or its implementing rules, four amendments to the annex to the decision – amendments 67, 68, 69 and 71 – would derogate from the existing implementing rules for the European Union budget. They would introduce the sort of simplification identified as necessary by the Commission in its explanatory memorandum to the programme proposal, such as extending the use of lump sums or lump-sum grants, reducing the administrative requirements on applicants for small grants and so on. So we have no argument with the substance of these amendments. However, the Commission believes that such provisions should initially be sought by revising the Financial Regulation and its implementing rules themselves. Changing the Community financial framework in sectoral programmes makes this framework much harder to read and to understand. Therefore, the Commission believes it is too early to include such provisions in the decision on lifelong learning.
On the named institutions: the new programme will support the operating costs of some institutions which do high-quality work in education and training at European level and which are important partners for the European Union. The prime criterion for their selection will be quality. This means using calls for proposals where the grounds for selection are set out in advance and every applicant can measure itself against these criteria.
Exceptionally, the Commission has proposed four institutions as eligible for operating grant support without a call for proposals. These four involve Member State governments in their governance and funding. Government involvement guarantees an important degree of quality and of commitment to the objectives, purpose and future development of these designated institutions.
Looking at the six institutions Parliament proposes for nomination, the Commission concludes that the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, which has intergovernmental funding and governance arrangements, is consistent with the logic of our original proposal. Therefore, we accept the amendment to this effect.
Briefly, on the budgetary amendments: a group of amendments relate to the budget of the programme. I am most grateful, as I have said, for the rapporteur’s proposal to increase the budget to EUR 14 600 million, and I can fully subscribe to her underlying reasons. However, the Commission cannot, pending an agreement on the Financial Perspectives, amend its original proposal, so I must reserve the position on the 10 amendments concerned."@en1
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