Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-04-19-Speech-4-610-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20120419.24.4-610-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, you said that the situation was not ideal. That is putting it mildly.
Europe has been in a grave situation of crisis, budgetary problems and scarce resources for several years and, I fear, will continue to be for a few years more. Each of our Member States is trying, after a fashion, to prepare its budget. We are trying to demonstrate the added value of the European Union and of European resources, and we are struggling to do this. We are taking this decision at a time when even the most ardent of us are calling for the European budget to be reduced. I find this extraordinary!
In this context of exceptional crisis, we are being called upon, this evening and tomorrow during the vote, to endorse this amending budget of EUR 650 million in commitment appropriations, in addition to the EUR 479 million already allocated for the ITER project in the 2012 budget. We will therefore end up with a credited budget line of EUR 1.12 billion. EUR 1.12 billion! That is 1% of the EU budget. Just imagine. We are broke, we are at a standstill, we are in difficulty, and we are committing EUR 1.12 billion to a project whose most optimistic advocates tell us that, possibly, in 2050, or indeed in 2080, it may pay off.
We must be mad. Have we gone barking mad? At a time when everything is going badly, when the ship is sinking, we are committing astronomical sums of money to a project for which we see absolutely no prospect of success – certainly over the medium term.
Admittedly, we may not be taking money away from some budgets. Although … We have discussed the framework programme, Europe 2020, research, and so on, but whatever we put under this item, we cannot put elsewhere. We are not in fact putting it in renewable energy, which has an immediate impact. If we invest it immediately in renewable energy, the impact is immediate: not in 2050, not in 2080, but in 2013, in 2014, providing thousands of jobs. I do not therefore understand how we can continue to engage in such lunacy when we are in such difficulty.
Ms Herzog, you reminded us of the background to this project. You told us that it was born in the aftermath of the cold war. That is true. Wait. Thirty years have passed since then, thirty years! Has the world not changed a bit? Should we not reassess our budgets? Must we continue, today, in the situation in which we find ourselves, in which Europeans are becoming impoverished, in which they no longer believe in the European project, in which Member States are struggling to balance their books and we are struggling to prepare our budget, to allocate EUR 1.12 billion to this project, not only in 2012 but also in the following years, in 2013, in 2014, until 2020, as you said? Are we going to continue on this course?
I truly think that we have become totally obsessed by this project, to which we cling in a way that is almost pathological, when all the indicators are already set to red. You will therefore understand that neither I nor my group will be able to vote for this amending budget."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples