Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-24-Speech-2-230"
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"en.20061024.31.2-230"2
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"Mr President, as a number of speakers have already said, what we have here before us is the first budget of the new financial period, and one that is described as a budget for savings, even though the only savings have been in terms of the interests of the European public. What we are dealing with here is a misconceived budget policy on the part of the European Union’s Member States.
Over the next seven years, then, the Trans-European Networks will have to get along with only EUR 8 billion instead of the EUR 20 billion that they actually need. Once more, the Council of Ministers has recourse to the old coercive trick of telling us, in this House, that if we do not pass the budget promptly, the programmes due to start in 2007 will not be able to do so on time. The Council can, and will, make scapegoats of Parliament and other bodies, even though it sometimes drags out its own decision-making processes over many months, and this is something we have to be on our guard against.
While I am on this subject, let me remind the Commission that it is this House, rather than the Council, that is constantly defending the Commission’s line, and it would have a salutary effect if the Commission were sometimes to be aware of that rather than constantly bowing down and taking dictation from the Council.
Also this week, we have to come to a decision on a quite unacceptable proposal that has been made for plugging a hole in the budget in the second pillar, in agriculture and rural affairs, which involves the Member States being allowed to shift up to 20% of the funds from the first pillar into the second, into rural areas, and that has been inadequately thought out. It runs counter to the prerogatives of this House, and it should be rejected. What do these two things – the trans-European networks and rural areas – have in common? Firstly, they have both fallen victim to the Council’s irresponsible austerity policy; secondly, in both cases, the Commission has distanced itself from its original position and quietly gone back to taking dictation from the Council, and thirdly, in both cases we have to try to put funds in reserve as a means towards bringing pressure to bear on both the Council and the Commission, in order to eventually save whatever can yet be saved."@en1
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