Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-17-Speech-3-051"
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"en.20081217.3.3-051"2
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"Mr President, this budget is the last in the current parliamentary term and the first budget we shall have voted on since the financial crisis came knocking at our door. It therefore has a special significance: it is a budget which European citizens will examine closely.
For me personally, this budget has a bittersweet taste, because it includes successes, but it also has shadows. I personally certainly count among the successes the fact that we have managed, albeit marginally, to increase payments in relation to the Council's position, that we have found relatively more resources for competitiveness, the environment and security and that, for the first time, we have a discrete position for dealing with illegal immigration on the southern borders of the European Union, where countries such as mine receive a hundred thousand desperate people every year, who come knocking on the door of Europe via its southern borders. For all these reasons, we have cause to be satisfied.
However, I am very disappointed that this first budget of the crisis was unable to send out a message that Europe is willing and able. Out of two hundred billion, we are still trying to work out how to spend five billion, which some Member States want back instead of putting towards competitiveness. It is a lost opportunity. For this year, I believe that we could have done more. I am still hopeful that in the Council, the usual suspects who like to refund surpluses to the national ministries will make one more effort, so that next year at least, we have a more ambitious approach."@en1
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