Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-15-Speech-2-022"

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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Lindblad, ladies and gentlemen, the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance also believes that the budget for 2010 which we have negotiated and agreed on is a reasonable compromise. At the beginning of the budget discussions, there were still several open issues and gaps which had not been funded. We have now more or less resolved these problems. Parliament will pay one third and the Council two thirds to fill the gaps, so from our perspective, this is a reasonable compromise and we are in a position to start the new year. Nevertheless, I would like to begin by looking at the problems relating to the structure and inflexibility of the European budget. We have already heard about the political symptoms. The fact that we had 50 transfers and 10 supplementary and amending budgets in 2009 must make it obvious to everyone that the objectives of this budget, with its tight constraints and rigid structure, are clearly no longer up to date. We must all work together to change this if we want to do things better in future. Therefore, I will now move on to the questions concerning the forthcoming review. The budget which we are now adopting is a budget for times of crisis. This was a motto coined by Mr Surján. In this context, crisis refers to both the financial crisis and the economic crisis. However, while the conference in Copenhagen is still underway, I would like to add the following point. We are, of course, faced with a crisis which threatens our very existence, in other words, the question of whether we, by which I mean people all over the world, will be able to save our planet and limit global warming to 2 °C. To achieve this, we must all act together with regard to our budgets, our management of resources and the way in which we live and manage our finances. We must move over to renewable energy sources. We must reduce our CO emissions dramatically. We must become a low-carbon economy. Of course, we must also spend much more on research into sustainability, new materials and new products. This is the only way to create new jobs. We must do this in such a way that the European internal market benefits from it and that we open up new opportunities for the European Union on the world market with green technologies and environmentally friendly products. This is our only hope of convincing the citizens of Europe that the European project has a future. This also means that we – the Member States and the European Union – must jointly invest more in education. This is the main resource that we have in the European Union. We must provide support for it in quite a different way so that our young people have opportunities in Europe and also throughout the world. There is one thing that I would like to add. We must also change our agricultural policy and our agricultural export subsidies dramatically and focus on the Structural Funds. These must also undergo significant change with regard to the restoration of old buildings and sustainable transport policy. What is it that I want to say? The 2010 budget represents a step in the right direction, but it is by no means enough. We in the Verts/ALE Group have coined the term ‘the green new deal’, because we are convinced that only a joint effort by the Member States, the Commission and the European Parliament in the spirit of Europe will generate the political strength and conviction to bring about major changes, to transform our economy and to create new jobs. Only when we can generate the political strength to make real changes will we be able to modify the European budget and the national budgets in the same way. With regard to Copenhagen, in the next few years, we will hopefully also be able to make funding available to enable the poor countries and, in particular, those in sub-Saharan Africa, to put in place new growth models. It is important that they do not copy our mistakes, but instead that we all cooperate – the industrial nations, the emerging economies and the developing countries – on moving towards a new way of living together and a new type of economy. This is the only way in which we can be successful throughout Europe and on a global scale."@en1
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