Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-02-21-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20080221.3.4-017"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the late 1990s the philosophy which prevailed in the European Union was that the integration capacity of the Union was to be measured according to the success of the internal market. The hope that the problems existing in the European Union could be resolved with the development concepts of the internal market, which were geared solely towards economic growth, remained unfulfilled, however.
The European internal market focussed the growth of economic activity on the centres of gravity which pulled in additional activity, at the expense of disadvantaged regions and the natural environment. And even in these centres, not everyone was able to share in the benefits; instead, poverty increased, triggering tensions and unrest.
Today, the Commission is making the same mistake. It is subordinating cohesion policy to the Lisbon strategy. Instead of genuinely prioritising the problems of the particularly disadvantaged regions and only promoting sustainable development projects, it is investing in outdated infrastructural concepts and, in consequence, only in the economic centres. The municipalities and regions will become dependent on the major European banks for generations. In my view, this is a massive problem, because ultimately, it is the next generation who will then pay the price of failed development policies. And that in turn will trigger migratory movements – my colleague Mrs Krehl has already indicated as much – and it will also trigger an anti-European mood because some sections of the population will not share in the benefits. These are dead-end strategies.
I believe we must be very careful not to put the European Union's internal cohesion at risk. Economic and social cohesion must genuinely remain a separate policy area and the benefits must be available to all the regions and people in Europe. This can only happen if cohesion policy is genuinely underpinned by a social model based on solidarity and on sustainable development models which are not pursued at the expense of the environment."@en1
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