Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-10-25-Speech-4-496-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20121025.33.4-496-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, I wish to thank Members very much for this debate. I will try to respond to four major topics which were raised: management and financing, environment and transport, transparency, democratic scrutiny and the treatment of youth, and, of course, reporting and implementation.
Concerning the question on the Danube waterway and its corridor priority, I would like to confirm that the Danube waterway is in the TEN-T network and therefore it will be treated as a priority project under the next multiannual financial perspective.
The last set of questions was aimed at how we would report, how we would inform Parliament on what has been done under the Danube strategy. As I said, we are now working on the assessment of the first year of implementation, and I can assure you that the report will be prepared well before June next year. I hope that we will find in it a lot of experience that can be used for the next period and also a lot of retrospective on what could have been done better under the current period. I hope that it will also serve as an inspiration for the new project and the new activities we can pursue under the Danube strategy.
First I would really like to thank everyone for their interventions, because it is very rare that one feels such overwhelming support for our common work. I think all Members believe that Europe needs the Danube strategy and that the strategy still has a lot to offer and that we are actually only starting to grasp the potential of what we can achieve through this macro-regional approach – as was said by the President – to our common history, common past and also, I believe, common future.
Allow me to continue to the questions raised by Mr Matula, Mr Tabajdi and Mr Toia concerning the management of financing and environment. What will be very important, of course, is to achieve a good solution on 22 and 23 November, and at subsequent negotiations with the European Parliament on the multiannual financial framework. This will only be the start, though, because if we want to succeed in this effort it will be quite important to have very close collaboration with the Member States and with the regions. We need to work on planning together what should be the key projects to be carried out under the umbrella of the Danube strategy.
It would be very helpful if funds could be earmarked for the projects now, so that we know the list of priority projects and what is important for the Danube regions and know which projects we would like to see implemented and financed through the cohesion and Structural Funds in the next period.
What we will try to do in the Commission will be to use the fact that this approach is already included in the draft regulations on cohesion policies, and we will do our best to include these in the common strategic frameworks, in the partnerships contracts and in the operational programmes.
The question was asked by Mr Toia and Mr Matula on how the Commission might be more closely involved in the planning and preparation of these projects. We consider that we can do this through our involvement in the drafting of partnership agreements and through our common management under the common strategic frameworks.
We realise that, as was said during the debate, in several Member States the absorption capacity of EU funding is not the best. We could do a lot by managing those funds better, synergising and offering additional technical assistance to those Member States which clearly have a problem with absorbing EU structural funding. I believe that this is something on which we have to focus, not least via the financial regulations which were approved today, which offer new ways of simplifying the whole procedure, and through which we should definitely achieve much better results in the future.
Concerning the environmental and transport, the key issue is always how to balance environmental aspects and navigational needs when it comes to such important waterways as the Danube. I agree that it is very important to use independent expertise, which is always how the Commission approaches these issues. It is also important to involve the public in the discussions and find out how citizens would like to reconcile the environmental aspects and also navigational needs in their regions. Therefore, the issue of democratic scrutiny and closer involvement of national and regional parliaments and the public in these debates is very important – not only from this point of view but also from that of what the EU can actually achieve through the good implementation of the Danube strategy in specific regions.
There was a question on orienting more of our attention towards youth. I agree with that fully because there is a high unemployment rate across Europe and we can see how young people can benefit from youth programmes. Priority area No 7 is focused exactly on these issues and is about bringing together universities, introducing common Masters and PhD programmes for young people and also strengthening youth mobility programmes in the Danube region, which would be a very good opportunity for young people to get to know each other better and also to look for further opportunities for studying and later on for work."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples