Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-24-Speech-2-238"
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"en.20001024.7.2-238"2
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"Mr President, the problem with the 2001 budgetary year is more one of quality than of quantity. We all know that there was no category relating to external action in the financial perspective adopted in Berlin. The military action against Serbia, aid for reconstruction, the foreseeable fall of Milosevic. A lot of need and little money. However, the financial perspective was a success because it was, at the time, the only possible agreement between 15 Member States. The Interinstitutional Agreement that resulted from the Summit was good news for the powers of this Parliament. External needs reveal the shortages in category 4.
However, what emerges most clearly now is the huge problem of the under-utilisation of all categories of spending: in rural development, in the Structural Funds, in the major external aid programmes. What is happening in the European Union budget? With what was not implemented in previous years we could fund another year without fresh resources. In any national, regional or local administration, such under-utilisation would put the heads of some of those responsible on the block. In the European Union, we do not even know who is responsible. Therefore, in the European Parliament, we will propose new measures, not so much aimed at seeking new funding – which we already know cannot be implemented under current conditions – but at establishing new institutional commitments that will improve the quality of spending and ensure that not a single euro is wasted. And you, Commissioner, will have to revise the commitology agreement, even if it seems impossible.
The efforts of the rapporteur, Mrs Haug, to incorporate the suggestions of our Group on that subject deserve a great deal of gratitude. We should recognise that she is being a very reasonable rapporteur and that she is seeking consensus. In the medium term we will see the importance of the decisions that Parliament is beginning to take today.
It is true that, if the Council took an intransigent position, it would make things difficult in such important areas as the mobilisation of the flexibility instrument for MEDA, the management committees, increases in payments in order to absorb the remainder that needs to be paid or the extension of the N + 2 planning procedure to external actions. If the Council took a flexible position, we could reach an agreement at second reading in order to close the budget.
Let us remember that the European Parliament has accepted a very low category 4, it has accepted a revision of the financial perspective being a possibility rather than a political priority, it has accepted a considerable cut in the European Union’s external aid. In short, it has agreed to play on a field that extends the Council’s budgetary prerogatives to the detriment of our own. But they cannot be extended
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Today we are also debating the Colom i Naval report on the Interinstitutional Agreement, in which the Commission undertakes to present Parliament with all the necessary information for initiatives that have financial implications. Now, in 2000, after more than 15 years of parliamentary history, is when this initiative comes to Parliament. Well we hope that there will be a similar undertaking from the Council. The European Parliament is the other branch of the budgetary authority and, despite this, it is the press that often informs us of the Union’s new financial commitments made in the European Councils. Then, when the commitment has already been announced and made, they just have to ask the Commission and its Commissioners to make a gap in the budget and Parliament to accept it. This cannot continue either, it is not good for anyone, not for the Member States, not for the institutions, not for the European Union. What credibility can a European Union that operates in this manner have? How can our policy have credibility?
Members of the Council, wherever you are, I consider myself to be a very moderate Member, who always defends the path of interinstitutional cooperation, both with regard to the budget and to any other matter. We are now at first reading and you have enough time to seek full agreement with Parliament. Consider the fact that, in European policy, as in any other field, sometimes the moderate options cease to be the majority options."@en1
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