Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-23-Speech-2-196"
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"en.20071023.23.2-196"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the President of the European Parliament for personally chairing this sitting and these proceedings, and for the fact that it is not taking place at midnight. I am very pleased about that.
Commissioner, there is no doubt that the 2008 budget proceedings will be quite challenging. However, in Parliament we stand together, and when we vote on Thursday I am fairly convinced that there will be broad support for the strategy, the Committee on Budgets and the draftsman that Mr Virrankoski has selected for the Commission budget.
The Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe supports the Commission’s excellent proposals for the funding of the Galileo satellite surveillance system. We are in favour of surplus money from agricultural schemes being used for this project instead of being returned to the Member States. It would not be reasonable to reduce the funding for research and transport in order to find money for Galileo, as is being proposed by the EU Finance Ministers. If the EU Member States agree that we are to have Galileo, they must also provide the funding for it without using it for other purposes. As has already been mentioned by Mr Virrankoski, we have previously been warned that Galileo has not been allocated sufficient money; the situation that we are now facing therefore does not come as a surprise.
The other significant controversial matter as regards the Council concerns the funds for foreign affairs policy. We are all extremely worried about whether enough money has been allocated to Kosovo and Palestine as well. I would like to thank Mr Virrankoski for his extensive efforts to find a compromise that enjoys broad support.
With regard to the agencies, we are satisfied that the border monitoring agency Frontex is receiving more funding, and we hope that a solution can be found to enable the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) to get started as quickly as possible with the LRIT Data Centre, which will be established by the end of 2008.
The rapporteur for the other institutions, Mr Itälä, has had both an achievable task and a very difficult one. The difficult task was the Parliament budget, where it was unfortunately not possible to bring the expenses down to this year’s level plus inflation. However, in spite of this, it has been possible to keep the expenses below the 20% ceiling. The ALDE Group supported the original compromise between the rapporteur and the Bureau, and it is regrettable that poor coordination between the chairs of the larger groups meant that the compromise had to be reworked. We should not see this happen again; we can do better. However, I am not chastising Mr Itälä. He has made a good contribution, and I would also like to thank him for finding a reasonable solution for the Committee of the Regions, which has been subject to very severe cutbacks by the Council."@en1
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