Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-11-23-Speech-2-419"
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"Mr President, I should like to begin by saying that no one can take pleasure in this lack of conciliation on 15 November. It is true that we would have preferred to have had an entirely different debate today, with the end of a conciliation procedure that might have culminated in an agreement and in the possibility of this budget being passed in the European Parliament also.
We will also need to take advantage of any opportunities for redeployment and transfer before referring to this flexibility idea. However, we can make progress. If everyone makes the necessary efforts, I believe we can make progress on this flexibility idea, on this task, and on this objective of financing ITER in 2012-2013, alongside the issue of the 2011 budget in the strictest sense.
There remains a third topic that you have also mentioned: political declarations. On this point, I must say that the Council cannot say any more than what was said on Monday in conciliation, although I know that Parliament was unable to agree with that at the time. I know that the commitments that were mentioned seemed too weak to Parliament but, once again, we will have an opportunity again to raise these issues and to debate them between us. We shall have to hold these debates because Articles 311, 312 and 324 of the treaty mention a number of consultations that must take place between our various institutions, and we shall ensure that they do take place because they are provided for in the treaty.
The declaration referred to Articles 312 and 324, pursuant to which we shall have to hold these debates in the future between our various institutions. Once again, however, we will hear a whole host of reasons for not wanting an agreement.
Nevertheless, I have perceived a will to succeed among the Members of the Council and within Parliament. Do we really want to act as scaremongers by telling each other that we prefer not to have a budget, not to implement the policies that are provided for in the 2011 budget and not to make a success of the first budget based on the Treaty of Lisbon, or, in fact, do we want to embark on a positive course of action whereby we obtain, one by one, a number of agreements to enable the European Union to move forward and to allow for the implementation, via the 2011 budget, of a number of policies that we have decided to promote? I hope that it really is with this aim in mind that we take advantage of the next few weeks to ensure that this first procedure under the Treaty of Lisbon is a success rather than a failure.
It is true that we were certainly all disappointed that this conciliation procedure was not a success. At the same time, however, I have heard both within the Commission, which has acted as a facilitator, which has truly played its role of facilitator all throughout the procedure, and especially within Parliament, a desire and a reminder of this strong desire to succeed and to seek success rather than failure. I have also heard it within the Council.
It is therefore true that the Belgian Presidency, immediately after the failure – we must clearly regard it as such – of 15 November, sought to resume immediate contact and to press ahead in a bid to ensure that this first budgetary procedure based on the Treaty of Lisbon is a success rather than a failure. However, I would remind you that every single one of us will always be able to find reasons not to succeed, and that is how the conciliation process broke down. Parliament will always be able to find proposals that the Council has made that it does not agree with, and the Council will always be able to find certain proposals that Parliament has made that are unsatisfactory.
There will always be a way not to succeed. However, I have heard both institutions express a desire to succeed. It is important now that we all assume our responsibilities and successfully conclude this agreement rather than remain stuck in this rut.
Once again, what message would we send if we failed to conclude this conciliation with an agreement? What image would the European Union project convey to the outside world, in this particularly unstable and difficult economic context, if it were unable, at this difficult time, to stick together, as it were, and make the necessary compromises between institutions in order to conclude a budget, in order to successfully conclude an agreement between our various institutions?
Let us make no mistake: aside from image, aside from an initial failure linked to this budgetary procedure based on the Treaty of Lisbon, there would also be very real consequences – and they would affect the people of Europe in particular. Some of these consequences have already been mentioned, because a provisional twelfths budget means a ‘zero growth’ budget, not to mention inflation. There is also a European External Action Service that could be in difficulty; financial supervision bodies that could be placed in a difficult situation; cohesion policies – I would remind you that the proposed budget provided for a 14% increase in payment appropriations – and, hence, cohesion policy funds that might not be released; yet more problems linked to the 2020 strategy; and political priorities that Parliament holds dear and which had been integrated into this 2011 draft budget, mainly under heading 1a, such as mobility, young people and education – policies that may well not be implemented either.
Therefore, aside from the negative image that the lack of an agreement could convey, it would also have very tangible, very real, very specific consequences that would certainly not help to improve the European Union’s image in the eyes of the citizens themselves. It follows that, if we want to reverse this trend, if we want to remain credible, if we want to assume this share of the responsibility, we must take advantage of these last few weeks in order to reach an agreement and emerge from this spiral of conflict.
Let us be clear: to do so, we need to bear in mind three things. Firstly, there is the 2011 budget as such, with its figures, a budget on which – and I have heard it said by a number of group chairs here – an agreement could be reached with regard to the 2.91% increase in payment appropriations. We could reach an agreement on the figures as such, on the 2011 budget, on what is, in fact, on the agenda today. I should like to reiterate that we know that this entails a number of concessions for the European Parliament. We know that, when it comes to the 2011 budget, Parliament has made a number of concessions with regard to its initial demands.
The second topic that almost all of you have mentioned is the multiannual financial framework for the financing of ITER, which relates to the issue of flexibility. Once again, the Belgian Presidency, in seeking to support this principle of agreement, immediately put the flexibility-related proposals back on the table. This is the context in which we are working at the moment. I would remind you, however, that we will need to be unanimous if we are to take the flexibility issue further, that this must be understood in a number of areas, and, in particular, that it must preserve the neutrality of the budget during the period in which the multiannual financial framework is in force."@en1
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