Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-07-07-Speech-1-086"

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"en.20080707.16.1-086"2
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"Madam President, Mrs Haug is right to alert the Commission to possible improvements in its draft budget when she talks about the transparency of administrative expenditure, particularly for the agencies, better financial programming and better evaluation of human resources. I am going to focus my comments on a paragraph in the Haug report that points out the lack of correlation between requirements for fighting climate change and the EU budget. Our budget is basically 1% of Europe’s GDP, which is derisory in comparison with the 20% of GDP committed by the United States at federal level. The Commission tells us that it is taking 10% of this tiny percentage for climate change – that is to say, 0.1% of GDP – yet the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Stern report, the UNDP and the World Bank are telling us that if we really want to combat its effects, we should be mobilising between 0.6 and 1.6% of GDP. The Stern report even mentions 2% of GDP. The Commission is therefore between 500% and 2 000% below what all these international reports are telling us. Here is another interesting figure: to help the developing countries, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – that again – tells us that around USD 100 billion a year would be needed to finance all these projects. The Commission tells us that this is interesting, that it is going to set up a Global Climate Change Alliance and that it is giving it EUR 20 million a year for three years. There is therefore a massive gap between needs and resources provided. When I say a gap, I mean such a gaping chasm that all the carbon in the atmosphere could be sequestered there. I do know that the Commission has little room for manoeuvre: expenditure is fixed, the envelopes for each programme are fixed, the measures to be financed for each programme and the conditions are fixed and, furthermore, the Council does not want to budge, and worse still, is cutting into expenditure. Luckily the Commission has the right of initiative, if only it would use it! We are within the ceilings of the financial perspective, as Mrs Guy-Quint has said. We have a margin of at least EUR 2 billion. If we do not use this EUR 2 billion margin, it is not simply a charming error of budgetary technique, but a failure to assist a European project in peril, a failure to assist a planet in danger."@en1
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