Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-045"
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"en.20060118.2.3-045"2
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"Presidents, ladies and gentlemen, our discussions on the Financial Perspective are about to take place. You said at the beginning, Chancellor, that you were familiar with annual budgets from working with the national budget in Austria. We have one of those at the European level too. The difference is that we also have to try, within the framework of a voluntary Interinstitutional Agreement between Parliament and the Council, to lay down common rules for a period of seven years governing both the volume of resources and their use. Since this is a voluntary agreement between two institutions, it is hardly surprising that one of the institutions is not prepared simply to accept the figures adopted at a summit meeting of the other institution on the basis of an assurance that the latter had gone as far as it could and that there was no more to be had. That would be the last straw! Any Parliament that relied on such an assurance would be jeopardising one of its fundamental rights and reneging on its corresponding legal and practical responsibilities.
Let us take a close look at your figures. We adopted the budget for 2006 only a few weeks ago. It amounts to 1.09% of GNP. In the Council, you said we should have to make do in future with 1.045%, which is considerably less. At the same time, we have major tasks ahead of us that have to be accomplished. These, however, can either not be adequately funded from a budget of this size, which would mean disappointing people, or else we must think of ways to achieve greater flexibility, so that we can keep our promises. Your pruning strategy gives us decisions to take. In which areas do you actually want to make cuts? In the fight against terrorism? I have heard that Europol is to be reinforced. In the realm of air safety, for which we are setting up an agency? I do not believe we can afford to make any savings in these areas. What about exchanges of school pupils, students and trainees, who travel to other European countries to develop their own skills, work in a European environment and make themselves competitive in years to come? Surely these exchanges are essential!
Research, you said, should be a national responsibility. Satellite navigation, large-scale lasers, neutron sources, genome banks: should research in all of these fields be limited to national efforts? I do not think that is the way forward. We have done a great deal of work here to put a good proposal on the table. We shall negotiate responsibly with you, in a spirit of mutual trust, to determine what is possible. As Europeans, however, I believe we, all of us, should consider what this Europe is actually worth to us. Before any figures in billions are bandied about, let me say that I worked this out for the other German Members and myself. Our proposal means that every German would have to spend ten euros a month in future to make all these things happen. Anyone out there who says that we are utterly irrational in the European Parliament or that we are overshooting the mark really has no idea what Europe is worth."@en1
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