Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-01-Speech-3-139"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20090401.15.3-139"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"r
− Mr President, firstly I should like to thank all of my fellow Members in the Committee on Regional Development, who have worked hard towards bringing this important agreement to the table today. This agreement concerns the modification of certain rules, in order to allow a series of changes to be immediately implemented.
Last week we were debating the future of the Cohesion Policy, and unanimously agreed that it has brought about huge advances in economic and social development in many of our regions.
At this moment of great uncertainty, it is more important than ever to defend these principles of solidarity and cooperation between territories, as the people need to see that we in Europe are capable of helping to find a way out of this crisis which is placing millions of people in situations of real difficulty. Today more than ever, we need strong tools with which to solve these problems.
By putting these modifications in place, we will be facilitating the acceleration of, and investment in projects that will also be important in creating jobs.
Moreover, thanks to the European Social Fund, we can develop training and retraining initiatives in order to bring the most vulnerable sectors of society, and those experiencing the greatest difficulties, into the labour market. This can be the case for women, disabled people, or the long-term unemployed. We must not forget that these sectors are the most vulnerable in times of crisis.
I also want to reiterate here, as we stated in the report’s explanatory statement, that despite being aware of the need for urgency that was necessary in tackling this issue, Parliament would like to have had more involvement in developing these proposals, in terms of the quality and quantity of dialogue.
Therefore, being mindful of the problems in Europe at this time, we fully support this proposal for measures to modify the Structural Funds, in order to move forward towards a solution to the present situation.
The European Union is being confronted with an unprecedented economic crisis, which has led to a recession in most of the Member States. Within the framework of the European Economic Recovery Plan, the European Commission has adopted a series of measures to introduce changes in the Structural and Cohesion Fund rules, in order to stimulate investment. These changes contain two clear priorities: an increase in expenditure, to improve liquidity, and the simplification of the rules to allow projects to be approved more quickly.
This package of modifications has been conceived as a temporary response to a critical situation, although in fact it does also answer the European Parliament’s call for greater simplicity and flexibility, reiterated on many different occasions.
I should like to make a brief statement concerning the proposed modifications, so that we all understand their importance with regard to achieving the objectives we have set out:
an increase in aid from the European Investment Bank, and the European Investment Fund, as well as greater financial support for technical activities related to project development and implementation;
simplification of the eligibility of expenditure;
an increase in pre-financing for the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF); the total amount of additional advances through this measure will be EUR 6.25 billion;
an acceleration in expenditure on major projects by amending the present maximum rate of 35% on advance payments, allowing advance payments of up to 100% for State aid beneficiaries of public benefits.
We in Parliament are aware that these measures must be passed as quickly as possible in order to meet the immediate need for liquidity in the Member States, and we know that these measures will definitely also have positive repercussions throughout all of the regions and municipalities of Europe."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"Iratxe García Pérez,"1
"apporteur"1
|
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples