Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2014-01-14-Speech-2-142-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20140114.25.2-142-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, cohesion is one of those wonderful words, like solidarity, where the practice has become almost completely divorced from the literal etymological meaning of the word.
We have had two decades and a little bit more of cohesion payments. They were introduced as part of the Maastricht Treaty, when it was all about bringing the worse-off regions of Europe up to the standard. We are now in a position to see how that has worked. Which country has been the biggest net recipient of cohesion payments under the European Treaties in per capita terms? Greece. Well, how is that working out in terms of improving the Greek economy? There is a reason why there is this link. It is that if you have more money available and being paid out by bureaucracies than you can get in the private sector then, in every cohort of Greek schools, the best and brightest kids will make the rational decision to work for Brussels or in some government agency, rather than making something or selling something. So the European Union becomes a gigantic mechanism for the redistribution of taxpayers’ funds – and we wonder why we are falling further and further behind economically."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples