Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-03-10-Speech-1-181"
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"en.20080310.21.1-181"2
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"Mr President, this amending budget proves once again what is self-evident: that the EU has the mechanisms and adaptability to provide solutions to specific unexpected problems. I should like to make three proposals for the package of two reports that we have discussed today. Two of them concern the Solidarity Fund, and the third, the Galileo Programme.
On the issue of the floods in the UK, the time interval between July and the present response from the EU is very satisfactory. It happens to be the quickest response throughout the operation of this fund, at least as far as I can remember. However, it creates a precedent: in future we shall expect such an immediate response to similar disasters, and here I am referring to the environmental catastrophe that we suffered in Greece last summer only a month later, in August. I therefore hope that next month the Commission will at last make a proposal through the competent Commissioner addressing the Greek request to activate the Solidarity Fund. I do not need to remind you of the shocking images of the great fire disaster in Greece; we all saw them, throughout Europe. I hope that
we shall at last have the Commission’s proposal in our hands within the coming month.
My second comment concerns the spectacle we are now making of ourselves. I have no idea how Parliament manages it, but every time we have some good news, we are the only ones who know about it! We are on our own, with no-one in the galleries, and probably not a single journalist! When shall we finally learn to market good news properly?
My third and last comment concerns the Galileo Programme. I agree with all my colleagues from the Committee on Budgets and, as that committee’s rapporteur for the Galileo Programme, I wish to be quite clear that we are not going to make any payment from the very considerable package of funds we have committed, unless we agree with the Council on the wider architecture of the programme. If we do not know who is doing what - and we are still in the dark because we are negotiating with the Council - we shall not spend anything. We are not going to throw money down the drain. Tomorrow morning we have a very important trilateral discussion with the Slovenian Presidency. There are two major outstanding issues. I hope that we can conclude these negotiations so that we can set our minds on making genuine progress."@en1
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