Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-15-Speech-4-228"
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"en.20000615.10.4-228"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, Commissioner, today, eight years on from Maastricht, the Cohesion Fund has, without a shadow of doubt, made a positive contribution towards promoting the economic and social cohesion of the regions of the EU and has had clear results in tackling social and regional disparities. Since I live in an area which benefits from the Fund, I can assure you that every one of my fellow countrymen is also aware of and acknowledges these results, not only because of the information and publicity campaigns, but mainly because the projects which have received funding belong to basic sectors which affect his quality of life, which he can see is improving. We would therefore like to commend the Commission for its actions so far in implementing the objectives of the fund and we urge it to continue its efforts to ensure that the Fund is used properly and helps improve its efficiency in the new programme period still further.
We must, of course, stress that the environmental aid granted continues to concentrate on the water sector, despite the need in many other cases for other measures to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment and the rational utilization of natural resources as laid down in Article 174 of the Treaty, which refers to reafforestation, land reclamation, etc. Considerable investment is still required in order to deal with the serious problem of treating solid waste and refuse, although we still need to adopt incentives for using the most modern, environmentally-friendly and efficient technology. It is also worth our supporting the promotion of further investment in environmentally-friendly transport infrastructures and we insist on the need to continue developing joint transport systems.
In view of forthcoming enlargement, which presents a great challenge, I consider it essential that we take prompt action to ensure that funding under the Cohesion Fund continues, given that it intervenes in two sectors which are very important in helping to achieve the objective of economic and social cohesion in the European Union, which is the Fund’s very
. The fact that it has so far worked highly effectively should be enough to convince us of the need to continue funding to recipient countries, provided they need continuing support and depending, aside from the nominal convergence of the economies of Member States, on real convergence of both the incomes and, more generally, the quality of life of European citizens in their regions.
I should like to close by thanking the rapporteur for his sterling work and his willingness to cooperate during the procedure to examine and supplement his report in committee and I should like to pass on to you this succinct and, to my mind, rather dramatic appeal by a farmer in my region. As he said so very simply yet so very forcefully on hearing of the achievements of our Union: “Europe yes, but a Europe for all the Europeans of the Union”."@en1
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