Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-26-Speech-3-030"
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"en.20051026.2.3-030"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner Grybauskaitė, Mr Lewis, today, again, you stand before a self-confident parliament, one that spells out how Europe’s tasks have become greater and how we consequently need more resources if we are to face these challenges. The Commission’s draft budget, with its 1.02%, is a prudent one. We regard the cuts that the Council has proposed as utterly unacceptable. We must be bold enough to fund specifically targeted tasks if we are to respond adequately to the challenges of the future.
I am much obliged to Mr Pittella, the rapporteur. Although he and I have moved closer together on essentials, there are a number of points that I would like to take up, where my group believes that there must be changes. We believe that the agricultural export subsidies in their present form are unjustifiable; for vegetables from Europe to be cheaper in countries such as Senegal than those produced locally is an intolerable state of affairs, and, by perpetuating it, we in the European Union are giving people cause to become refugees. This policy cannot be allowed to continue.
The tobacco subsidies must also be cut back; that would offer us the chance to free up funds that could be invested elsewhere, particularly in research policy or in education, culture and young people. Mr Pittella takes the line – and on this I agree with him – that this is where we need to spend more on enabling students to become more mobile in Europe. Real cultural provision reaches people where they are, and in making it available we should return at least to the 2004 figures.
We also have to spend more on renewable energies if we really want an ‘away from oil’ strategy as an adequate response to the challenges of climate change. We need to do this not only for environmental reasons, but also for reasons of economic policy. Any strategy of this kind must form part of the Lisbon strategy, for it is environmental technologies that will give us an edge on the world market. This is something in which we, as Europeans, must have a particular interest, and we must be ambitious enough to make headway here.
Turning to foreign policy, the Council keeps delivering itself of pious utterances about how we need to do more: more in Iraq, more in Afghanistan, more for the victims of the tsunami. Then it goes and cuts the expenditure on day-to-day policy. In so doing it is irresponsibly undermining the European Union’s credibility. The present budget estimates will do nothing to enable us to achieve the objectives we set ourselves in the year 2000, which involved such things as a more determined war on poverty. Like some of those Members who have already spoken, I would like again to say loud and clear to the Council that we have to make full use of this flexibility – in the shape of these EUR 493 million – if the European Union is to be able to hold its head up in the world next year and really be able to do things we have promised to various parts of the world. We therefore urge the Council not to take a rigid line on this, but to change position and join with the Commission in bringing into being a really good budget for the European Union – one that shows a commitment to its future."@en1
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