Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-15-Speech-2-011"
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"en.20090915.3.2-011"2
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"I am going to speak in my mother tongue because I am hoping for a Europe where this act is a natural right in every parliament, not to mention in other areas of public life as well. In that Europe, there is no law preventing anyone from using their mother tongue, not even in Slovakia. I also expected that the current financial crisis would not only reduce production and increase unemployment, but also provide us with an opportunity to improve the European Union’s budget through reform measures.
Parliament already expressed its point of view in February. It was encouraging that the European Commission and Council expressed their agreement with it. Based on what I know about the draft, I am sad to say that the attempt to translate the fine words into the language of numbers was not a complete success. It is time to face up to the fact that no one is happy with the European Union’s budget. The budget’s revenue side is a serious burden for Member States, but the sum available is not sufficient for them to achieve their objectives. We are far away from achieving both full employment and a knowledge-based society. We spend large sums on agriculture, but dairy farmers, for instance, are affected by an unmanageable crisis. The biggest item on the expenditure side is the cohesion policy, but the gaps between regions are growing instead of decreasing.
Researchers born and trained in Europe are working outside the European Union. We are therefore lagging behind when it comes to innovation as well. We hoped that the crisis would also provide an opportunity for us to have a shake-up and make the European Union’s budget more successful and tangible for its citizens. We also hoped to use the budget not only in compliance with the rules and without any corruption, but also to take a look at the expenses and consider which programmes actually provide value and success for our money.
What can we do now? Parliament will endeavour to shape the budget in such a way that its message will be clearer to the EU’s citizens. We want to increase those items which help tackle the crisis. With this in mind, we are putting forward our thoughts on implementing the economic stimulus plan. We want to tackle head on the challenges posed by climate change as well. What we would like is for the financial crisis to be tackled effectively, not only using a couple of billion euros from the plan earmarked for this purpose, but also with every item in the budget, so that Europeans realise that the European Union is not a superfluous expense, but an effective tool for solving their problems. I call on my fellow Members, the Council and Commission to support this."@en1
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