Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-07-05-Speech-2-572-000"
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"Mr President, at the beginning of his mandate Mr Barroso promised to put on the table a bold multiannual financial framework based on a system of own resources. That is also the reason, if you remember, that in 2009 that we supported his appointment, and he kept his word.
It is very important that, for the first time in the last two decades, we have a consistent radical change in the budget, in which we are going back to the initial idea in the Treaty of Rome, which is to base the budget of the European Union on own resources.
The second positive thing is that you also backed, as did the Polish Presidency, the idea of a European conference on the financing of the Union. That is an old idea of Mr Lamassoure’s. One year ago in 2010 – you remember, Mr Lamassoure – the idea was impossible. Today, if I heard the Polish Presidency correctly, it is becoming reality. It is also a very good thing that the European Parliament and the national parliaments will be involved.
The most important thing is to do it. The main task is before us. We have a good proposal from the Commission. We have a Presidency that is willing to start a real debate on this, also involving the national parliaments. Now we have to face the biggest challenge, namely to convince public opinion that some of the arguments that are used against this proposal are completely wrong.
Own resources do not mean more taxation for the citizens, on the contrary. Citizens will pay exactly the same. The only thing that is changing is that there will be a direct link between the citizen and the European Union so that the citizen can directly control the European Union. That is, in fact, a democratic advantage that we create with a system of own resources. It is not one penny or one pound more than they are paying but they have direct control over European expenditure.
The second thing we have to explain is that, by making cuts to the European budget, you do not solve the problem of fiscal consolidation of the Member States because the total deficit of all Member States in the European Union today is EUR 800 billion. For example, if you cut the budget of the European Union by EUR 4 billion, because you say that you are blocking the increase in nominal terms, there is no increase in the Union’s financial resources. What you do is gain EUR 4 billion. So you are lowering the EUR 800 billion fiscal deficit to EUR 796 billion. But what the governments that are defending this do not say is that they will increase their expenditure on a number of issues.
It is European cooperation that can gain money for the national Member States. Take the diplomatic service, for example: we have 93 000 diplomats in Europe and in the US there are 25 000. Take defence, for example: we have two million soldiers in Europe and there are 1.4 million soldiers in the US. Take monetary policy: there are 25 000 staff in Europe and 11 000 in the Federal Reserve Board in the US. This is, in fact, what is to be gained from a bold European budget. It can gain and it can cut money in the different Member States of the European Union.
We have an enormous amount of work to do to convince public opinion because some nation states have used wrong arguments against this proposal. I think we have to fully back the Commission proposal."@en1
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"en.20110705.37.2-572-000"2
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