Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-15-Speech-2-023"
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"en.20091215.7.2-023"2
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"Mr President, the EU budget has been suffering from a number of structural problems. It is too big and it keeps growing. There are built-in automatic increases for many items, especially for the operating costs of bureaucracy without any apparent improvement in output performance.
All budgets are supposed to be mirror images of some economic policy considerations. The EU budget is an exception. It does not reflect any consistent set of common values. Instead, it tries to justify an EU-wide policy of neo-Keynesian demand management by spending more on a great majority of items without any underlying structural reforms.
Take the example of the Globalisation Adjustment Fund. Half a billion euros is supposed to be spent on mitigating the negative impact of globalisation. Instead, Member States are having a hard time putting together rational proposals for a couple of tens of millions. On the one hand, it is a tremendous waste of scarce resources; on the other hand, it is a prime example of distorting the rules of creative destruction in capitalism.
The Committee on Budgets was unhappy to see a new item – the cost of decommissioning the Kozloduy nuclear power plant – coming up at the last minute. It was a sign of bad planning. Nevertheless, not only the decommissioning of Kozloduy, but even support for the construction of a new power plant, would be more important than spending in the milk fund with this untimely and inefficient increase.
As if it were part of a beneficial demand boost, the EU bureaucracy gets undeserved and unnecessary wage increases. When the EU is struggling with a once in a lifetime deep recession, it is just not appropriate to shield ourselves and our own administration from the negative consequences. Would it not be more appropriate to accept even a nominal wage decline and hence boost employment in the name of European solidarity?
It is also a worrying sign of inadequate planning that the disparity between commitment and payment appropriations is growing in the case of a large number of items. Since we cannot incur a deficit, we push more and more commitments to the future. It is tantamount to mortgaging the future of the EU and undermining prospective discretionary spending beyond repair.
Many MEPs are concentrating on pet projects and pork-barrel spending. The budget should not be used as a backward-looking tool preserving the status quo, but as a forward-looking instrument to sharpen the institutional regulatory framework of the EU which, in turn, should aim at strengthening the single market. Less protection for vested interests is the key for the EU to avoid sinking into irrelevance on the world stage."@en1
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