Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-10-20-Speech-2-330"
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"en.20091020.35.2-330"2
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substitute; Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis (2009-10-08--2011-07-31)3
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"Madam President, I would like to start by thanking Mr Surján for his sterling work in keeping the different elements of this budget process together. People are now saying that many of the Member States are having great difficulties with their public budgets, and that we should therefore rein in on spending too. That is true, but there is no public budget more controlled than the EU budget. We in the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe support the result of the vote in the Committee on Budgets. We support the draft budget put forward by Mr Surján.
For us, the funding of the investments under the recovery plan in energy and climate policy and the focus on research and innovation were the most important priorities for the 2010 budget. That is also the way we want to see the EU budget go in future – in other words, that we should concentrate on these areas. We think it is a poor state of affairs that neither the Commission nor the Council has indicated where we are to find the money for these investments in the recovery plan – investments that not only we here in Parliament, but also the Heads of State or Government of the EU, support. It is appalling that we have to see this acted out time after time when expenditure can be indicated but no decent funding can be found for it. We therefore support Mr Surján’s proposal to review the Multiannual Financial Framework and look at whether the money for energy investments can be recovered from unused funds within the agricultural budget.
The Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe also supports the proposal to allocate EUR 300 million to a dairy fund to cushion the current crisis for dairy producers. We share the view that the crisis is serious and must be tackled. Personally, I am not a supporter of the new fund as the Commission does already have tools to help the industry and has also earmarked nearly EUR 0.5 billion for the purpose. The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development wanted to earmark EUR 600 million for a dairy fund over and above this half a billion. In this regard, I believe that the result of the vote in the Committee on Budgets – the EUR 300 million – is an expression of a more realistic solution.
This draft budget removes a number of the Council’s savings and provides a more realistic assessment of the needs for payments in the coming year, and the multi-annual agreement has proven itself to be more a rigid and inflexible framework, in particular, in relation to category 1a, which includes research, education and transport, and category 3, which includes legal and asylum policy and culture and information policy, as well as external affairs policy, while the ceiling for category 4 is chronically far too restrictive.
I would also like to thank Mr Maňka for his work on the budget for other institutions. Parliament’s budget remains within the 20% for total administrative expenditure in the EU, and that despite taking on the expenditure for Members’ compensation under the new Statute for Members. Our group believes that we should be careful of excessive increases in the allocation for political parties, but we have agreed to the draft that is on the table, and I would also like to thank Mr Maňka for the fact that he has focused on the expenditure on translation and on Parliament’s buildings policy. It is high time that we got collaboration between the institutions and a report into Parliament’s buildings policy over a number of years. We have been calling for this for a long time. Now we may finally see it laid on the table."@en1
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