Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-14-Speech-3-027"
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"en.20051214.6.3-027"2
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".
Mr President, last June, the majority of Parliament warmly welcomed Mr Blair. Six months later, the chairmen of the political groups took a very unusual step and unanimously rejected his budgetary proposals on the grounds, I quote, ‘of a lack of solidarity’.
The President of the Commission has just made a speech along the same lines, and our entire debate could not be clearer. This turnaround in the situation ought to make the outgoing Presidency reflect.
The UK Presidency’s offhand manner towards its partners in general and to the new Member States in particular has, this time round, crossed the threshold between what is acceptable and what is not. How can one dare envisage resolving Britain’s internal political and budgetary quarrels on the back of the new Member States, which have the most need of Community funds, while at the same time professing to be the champion of enlargement?
On the one hand, the new Member States would be granted EUR 14 billion less in appropriations than what was proposed in the June compromise, the amount of which was itself meagre. On the other hand, Great Britain, on account of its notorious rebate, would benefit from an extra EUR 12 billion in savings in comparison with what had been envisaged six months earlier. This is a Thatcher-style touch that could cost us dear.
As for the desire expressed by the Presidency-in-Office to reform the CAP with a view to making it fairer, let us leave it to the 7 December issue of the
to assess the sincerity of that desire. I quote: ‘When the Commission proposed to set a ceiling on the size of the farms eligible for subsidies during the last reform of the CAP, the initiative was blocked by the United Kingdom because the latter has fewer small farms than the other Member States’. The great European principles of the current Presidency obviously stop at the point where major domestic interests come into play.
Thus, it took a fair amount of composure to look down on the new Member States, as Mr Straw did, by comparing the funds allocated to these countries in the forthcoming financial perspective to two Marshall Plans, even though, according to your Foreign Secretary’s own figures, the cheque would, to all intents and purposes, amount to nothing less than a 2000-2013 Marshall Plan exclusively for Great Britain, the fifth global economic power. This is no longer about Europe; it is about winning the lottery.
Let us not allow the bad old days of ‘I want my money back’ to return with a vengeance. The letter from the six biggest net contributors announcing, two years ago, that they intended to limit future budgets to 1% of gross national product sadly re-opened this dead end. Mr Blair leapt unrestrainedly into the breach. We must arrest this wayward trend while there is still time.
It appears that we are in the middle of a period of reflection on the direction to be taken by the European adventure. It seems to me that the time has come to choose between integration via the market and political integration, between fierce rivalry and solidarity and between capitulation and ambition. We will soon see who really wants Europe."@en1
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