Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-039"
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"en.20080422.4.2-039"2
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"Mr President, for the ninth time, I have had the opportunity to participate in the process whereby Parliament approves the accounts for the Commission, the Council, Parliament and the other EU bodies. Once again, this year we have found major irregularities. The situation was particularly bad in connection with the Commission’s management of the money in the Structural Funds, where nearly EUR 4 billion (almost DKK 30 million) was paid out incorrectly. For reasons of time, I will focus my remarks on this.
Once again this year we are saying that there is something wrong, and once again we are receiving assurances that things will indeed be improved. We have received such assurances every year and yet the situation continues because the entire support system is so complicated, so unreasonable and so impossible to manage. In the Committee on Budgetary Control we have raised the pivotal question: for the EU as a whole, what is the effect of the enormous reallocation of money between the Member States? After all, there are no visible improvements in the countries that receive support. Next year they will again be behind and they will receive support once again. Of the 15 old EU Member States, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have received support every single year since they became members. There are 11 Member States, all old Member States, paying for the entire net difference. Naturally, all new members receive support.
Countries that implement economic reforms and work effectively, and where the citizens are willing to pay high taxes, must pay countries that will not reform their obsolete structures or demand particularly high taxes. The EU’s support policy is to a large extent doing nothing! Why carry out reforms when it is possible to send the bill for not doing so to the citizens of other countries? The entire reallocation is foolish. Not only do many billions end up in the wrong hands, but the support philosophy itself is sick because it rewards countries that will not implement reforms and punishes those that are doing just that, countries that the EU needs. The EU could perform its tasks with 15% of the current budget! In addition, we would also be free of all such cases of economic scandal. Therefore, I personally intend to vote against approval of the Commission’s accounts.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues in the Committee on Budgetary Control for the considerable amount of good work that they have done."@en1
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