Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-12-Speech-2-019"
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"en.20001212.3.2-019"2
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".
Madam President-in-Office, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to start by thanking the President-in-Office, who negotiated with us, with Parliament, in a shrewd and tenacious manner, often without the support of her colleagues, by thanking the Commissioner, who never once lost sight of global European interests, both on and off stage, and by thanking all my colleagues who backed me at the most crucial moments, even where they were of a different opinion, and who were supportive and joined forces in order to defend Parliament's position. My sincere thanks to one and all. Without such teamwork we could never have arrived at what is now a relatively comfortable, by that I mean perfectly tension-free situation. There now appear to be no further obstacles to Parliament's passing a resolution on the European Union budget for 2001 on Thursday.
I should like to have responded to long-term requirements with proper multiannual planning. All this means, of course, is that we shall face the same mountain of difficulties during the next budgetary procedure.
I hope that the person who succeeds me as Parliament's general rapporteur and the Belgian Presidency of the Council, which will be taking over in the second half of next year, enjoy their discussions. I know from my own experience just how difficult it is to keep all the groups in Parliament together. However, I also know from the discussions that it is far more difficult to formulate a negotiable Council position, obtain a mandate and accommodate pure national chauvinism in a fairly reasonable and tenable overall European decision. Naturally, that does not only apply to purely budgetary processes, as the Nice Summit so graphically demonstrated yet again.
So we stand once again at the end of a year and ask ourselves how, in Heaven's name, we can make the Council see reason and make a good servant out of an evil master.
The chairman of the Committee on Budgets tells me that this is the very first time that agreement has been reached between the Council and Parliament at conciliation. So well done everyone!
There is a proverb which says that money makes an evil master but an excellent servant. As the elected representatives of the people, we parliamentarians have acted in accordance with this proverb. We have not harped on about principles. We have not set budgetary objectives in advance and then tried to tailor our policy to them. We wanted a proper, economical, logical budget which would allow us to honour our political commitments and really help those who need our help.
So we agreed with the Council during the night of 23 to 24 November on the main points of what is a perfectly reasonable, although by no means brilliant budget. Whichever way you look at it, it is reasonable not to give up in the fight against unemployment in Europe, which is why we keep insisting on the need for action at every political level – at local, regional, national and at European level. The European budget will include EUR 450 million to promote employment over the next five years by supporting small and medium-sized enterprises.
If we implement the action lines described in the charter on SMEs and help SMEs to apply new technologies, we shall, I think, have found a way of creating jobs. The agreed EUR 450 million is more than four times what the Commission proposed in the preliminary draft budget and frontloading EUR 100 million next year should get us off to a flying start.
The Committee on Budgets proposes that plenary remove the reserves set up at first reading. This applies both to the performance reserve under the heading foreign policy and the administrative expenditure reserve. We have stated time and again that we support the reform of the Commission and that we agree to the 400 new posts, combined with a new early retirement scheme, but only subject to certain conditions. Some of these conditions have now been met. The Commission has submitted its analysis of outstanding commitments and its strategy for eliminating abnormal outstanding commitments. We put the final touches to a joint declaration by the Council and Parliament in a trilogue last Tuesday. We all agreed that the Commission should draft a report by the middle of next year on progress made in phasing out commitment backlogs, implementing programmes and simplifying project cycles, a report on how comitology is working, on progress made in implementing the reform package and on the performance targets of the main programmes under Category IV, to mention just a few aspects of the joint declaration. We now expect the Commission to start work at soon as possible.
Apart from a few minor skirmishes started or continued by the Council at second reading, our second reading has been stripped of most of its contentious points, mainly because we have stated that we are prepared to help the Council achieve what it sees as the extremely important objective of reducing the increase in payments to 3.5%. This will be achieved mainly by removing the Structural Funds reserve set up at first reading and making fewer payments for Community initiatives, which need to be rebudgeted anyway. The Commission's Letter of Amendment no. 2 which, following renewed calculation, has deducted around EUR 900 million from the sum needed for Category I, was also extremely helpful here. This Letter of Amendment is most welcome and I imagine that Parliament's consent to it is most welcome in the Council, because it also contains an estimated surplus for the current budget of EUR 900 million, which can be entered straight away under revenue for 2001.
What worried us most right through the budget procedure was how to fund our foreign policy. Our financial perspective for Category IV was clearly way off target since the war in the Balkans. The Commission therefore suggested revising the figures by EUR 300 million. The Council fought against this tooth and nail and it was impossible to reason with it on this point, just as it was last year. For the Council, the financial perspective is a monstrance and must not be changed. It has made it into its evil master, to continue the proverb which I quoted earlier. We were therefore forced to do a deal with it on the EUR 200 million flexibility instrument, as if this did not represent a change to the financial perspective. But at least we now have a further EUR 200 million at our disposal, although we did in fact need another EUR 300 million. But we can at least fund what we think is the most important task, i.e. the democratisation and reconstruction of the western Balkans, from a total of EUR 839 million, including EUR 240 million for Serbia.
We refused to allow our other foreign policy priorities to be whittled away still further. We can finance cooperation with the Baltic region and our crisis reaction forces and we have given MEDA EUR 40 million more than the Council provided. So, as you can see, we have cobbled together a solution for the 2001 budget. However, this solution is weak on political and budgetary planning, because it takes no account of the fact that money is needed over a period of several years."@en1
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