Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-13-Speech-2-045"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20051213.6.2-045"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I would like first of all to congratulate the rapporteur, Mr Pittella, and his team, on the excellent work they have done and I would like to add that it is not my custom to congratulate all of the rapporteurs when their reports are finished.
Since it has taken two to achieve all of this, and I do not want to be entirely negative toward the Council, I would like to congratulate the British Presidency, in which I must confess I did not have too much confidence at the beginning, but which in the end has been up to the job.
They have made great efforts and they have faced many problems. Having been rapporteur for the Union’s budget, I am well aware that it is not an easy thing to complete a successful budget.
I would like to focus, Mr President, on the aspects that I consider to be of particular importance. Firstly, for the first time we have managed to apply a principle which this Parliament had always advocated: the sums approved during codecision are not sacred and they can be altered if the budgetary authority believes that to be necessary.
We all agree that, in order to improve the management of multi-annual programmes, the security of financial packages is an important factor. But we cannot turn what is no more than a tool into an objective. This is what differentiates us from the Council.
Perhaps what separates us from the Council is the definition of the objectives. Perhaps the Council’s objective is simply the certainty that nothing is going to change once a decision is taken. What I believe we could call ‘the certainty of the accountant’.
To all of this we must add that the programmes whose funding has increased in the 2006 budget are hugely symbolic to the European Union. Both the Socrates Programme, which is well known to many citizens, and Youth, are examples of what a Parliament can do to create European awareness amongst the Union’s citizens.
Furthermore, the LIFE programme, created by Parliament itself years ago, is one of those that enjoy the greatest acceptance amongst the European citizens and which demonstrate most clearly what kind of Europe we here in Parliament want to see.
I am also pleased that the Council has not been able to impose the absurd manipulation, which they call ‘interpretation’, of the rules for mobilising the flexibility instrument. An unnecessary instrument within the interinstitutional agreement, which only exists because of the Council’s constant and almost legendary refusal to use the appropriate instrument for dealing with cases in which more appropriations than those provided for at the beginning of a period of programming of the financial perspective are required.
That appropriate instrument is called ‘revision’ and its use does not lead to chaos or to eternal damnation. The consequence of this more rational use of the resources available to us — the phrase should be familiar to you — has meant that the cuts we have been making since 2000 in the Union’s external actions are less than usual this year."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples