Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-10-22-Speech-3-273"
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"en.20081022.21.3-273"2
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".
Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the preparations for the first reading of the European budget for 2009 are pretty much complete. I would therefore like to start today’s debate by thanking the members of the Committee on Budgets, and all the members of the specialised committees who have worked so closely with me, most sincerely for their cooperation and for all the time they have devoted to this.
Thirdly, we have given the package of pilot projects and preparatory measures, which was agreed between all the groups and has already been evaluated by the Commission, a range of impulses for new policy elements, new Community actions and possibly new legislation.
Fourthly, we have followed our political judgment. Nobody can expect good administrative work, be it from the Commission or from decentralised agencies, if they do not provide a large enough budget for staff, and we therefore cannot accept the Council’s cutbacks. We have restored the approach taken in the preliminary draft budget, and in return the Commission could not only thank us, but also be on our side in disputes with the Council.
Fifthly, I would like to turn to the biggest problem, namely Heading 4, grandly entitled ‘EU as a global partner’. When this heading was established back during the negotiations on the Financial Perspective, it was already hopelessly underfunded. That is why, in each year’s budget debates, we have stressed the same thing: how are we going to fund everything that is looking for funding and, at the same time, leave ourselves enough breathing room to be able to react to unforeseen events during the financial year?
I can say right here and now that there has been, and still is, no satisfactory solution. For our assistance in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Georgia, what we really needed was long-term programmes, not this continual hand-to-mouth existence.
This is nothing new, but this year the Commission gave us a new challenge: in view of the enormous global increases in food prices, in July it proposed what it called a food aid facility for the less developed countries, with a budget of EUR 1 billion for 2008 and 2009.
If the Commission had been diligent, it should immediately have suggested transferring the necessary resources from Heading 2 to Heading 4. It did not do so, though, because not only is it not diligent, it is afraid. It was afraid of not getting approval from the Council, and now we are saddled with the problem. We need to convince the Council not just to sermonise about the need to help the poorest of the poor, but to work with us to find the resources – yes, and where from? – so that we can provide direct food aid and buy seed and fertiliser.
It was quite clear to the Committee on Budgets that we would not be able to find the necessary money in the budget lines under Heading 4, and so we created what is known as an ‘asterisk amendment’, containing EUR 250 million for food aid, 40 million for Kosovo, 80 million for Palestine and 20 million for Afghanistan. This asterisk amendment, which makes it quite clear that we want to spend more than the money available according to the Financial Perspective, should be seen as an invitation to the Council.
Let us hope that the Council will actually see our note as an invitation or demand, and enter into negotiations with us without delay. We have no time to lose – we should not leave everything to the last minute. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, it is over to you.
As I said right at the start of the 2009 budget procedure, and I am happy to say again, a budget rapporteur is only as good as the sum of the members working with her, so I am very grateful to you.
I also need to thank the team in the secretariat of the Committee on Budgets: without the consistently excellent work of the secretariat staff, we Members would, with the best will in the world, be nothing, so thank you! Yes, I agree, a round of applause would be quite appropriate.
My thanks also go to my personal assistant and to the staff of the groups: it takes many heads and many hands to do a good job.
The preparations for the first reading of our budget, during which we had to read, understand and evaluate 1 400 amendments, were greatly affected by the financial crisis. Although our budget of around EUR 130 billion looks ridiculously small set against the hundreds upon hundreds of billions that the Member States, acting both jointly and separately, have spread out as a safety net under both the banks and the real economy, our meetings to prepare for the first reading were nevertheless much shaped by contributions on precisely this subject from all the groups involved. In so doing, we were basically already anticipating the Council’s reaction to our budgetary requests.
What, then, are our requests? First of all, there are the payments. We pointed out back in July that we could not approve a 15% gap between commitment appropriations and payment appropriations, which the Commission proposed in the draft budget and the Council increased still further. In our opinion, that does not fit in with the principle of budgetary accuracy and clarity. Moreover, when we compare this gap in the third year of the current Financial Perspective with the gap in the third year of the previous Financial Perspective, which was only 3%, we simply do not see how such an enormous gap can be justified. We have therefore increased payments: we could not close the gap completely, but we have halved it, to leave a gaping hole of 8%.
We did not increase payments by acclamation or at random, but in those budget lines that help to fund Parliament’s priorities: action to combat climate change, the social dimension in terms of growth for jobs, shaping globalisation and support for small and medium-sized enterprises, and also certain lines that improve the safety of citizens. In total, we have increased payments from 0.89% of gross national income – which was the level proposed by the Council – to 0.96%, rounded, of gross national income.
Secondly, we decided to make full use of the options afforded us by the Financial Perspective. Under subheadings 1a and 3b, we want to distribute all the money to the budget lines that are important to us, and not leave any margin. We want the title of subheading 1a, ‘competitiveness for growth and employment’, not just to be purely rhetorical, but also to include specific measures. We do not want the title of subheading 3b, ‘citizenship’, to be an empty phrase – we want to bring it to life, as, after all, this subheading brings together policies that directly affect citizens at local level, and that the European Union is particularly good at making visible."@en1
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