Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-20-Speech-3-607"
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"en.20101020.24.3-607"2
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"Mr President, this has been a fascinating debate. In a way, it very much coincides with yesterday’s speech here by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, when he clearly said that the EU and the United Nations share responsibility in this world in the fight against poverty, the fight against climate change and the fight against nuclear proliferation. It is a common challenge that we face.
Thank you very much. I very much commend the work of the rapporteurs, which was very much appreciated from our side.
On the whole, our citizens today are not too worried about this issue because they believe that we take care of this issue and also promote our values. Transnistria was mentioned. It is not thousands of kilometres away from us; it is very close. Concerning peace and security, it is true that we do not have too much conflict, but that is because we have an extremely active external policy in order to prevent any conflict as soon as it starts.
I believe that we have experience that we can be proud of. Financial instruments definitely help us to address these challenges. I believe that today’s debate was basically very positive about the experience that we have had from the financial instruments. At the same time, I would emphasise that we have full accountability, and that it is taxpayers’ money. Whenever we start a project, there are ex ante controls and there are ex post controls afterwards. There is a Court of Auditors of the European Union that looks not only at whether the money is spent correctly, but also at the political reasoning behind this. The Committee on Budgetary Control is quite tough with regard to any Commission spending, so I can assure you that taxpayers’ money is very much valued and is spent with good purpose.
We always discuss how to be more effective, but I can assure you that we follow policy objectives that have been agreed with this House. Today’s debate has already started the next debate, because ambition concerning the revision of financial instruments has been rather humble until now. We wanted just to adopt them until the year 2013, with some particularities.
Some of you address the challenge for countries that will have particular issues because of our agreement on the banana trade. It is necessary to adopt banana accompanying measures as soon as possible. It is not only our credibility which is at stake; countries really face a challenge. That is the reasoning behind it. I believe that this House was very supportive of it. We have started to debate what will happen after 2013, and I would draw your attention to the fact that this is the beginning of the debate. We are not prejudging what will happen after 2013. The budget review was adopted by the Commission yesterday; it will be considered in this House.
I intend to discuss the Green Paper on modernisation and development policy within the Commission. I believe my colleagues will also come forward with issues. We need to agree on policy priorities and also financial instruments well in advance so that we do not need to make an adjustment later if we find that there is not sufficient money in one instrument and we try to cover some of the priorities with reallocation.
I understand that this is not the best possible way, but it means that before adjusting the financial framework, we should agree what we would like to achieve, which instruments should be applied, and what scope we would like to see.
I would like to emphasise that, as a Commissioner, I have two budgetary authorities. One is definitely this House, but the other is the Council. I believe this means that, for all the scrutinies that we will carry out and on which we should agree, we need to follow the letter of the Lisbon Treaty, with the political willingness to find the right compromise so that democratic scrutiny can be fully emphasised to show that it is efficient, swift and effective.
This is exactly what we have discussed today in the meeting that I mentioned in the first speech. I have every reason to believe that we will find the necessary compromise. It will not be easy; it will require a lot of political will. On the Commission side, we definitely have the political will because I know what the stakes are, particularly for some of the measures where we need a swift conclusion of this process."@en1
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