Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-19-Speech-3-115"
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"en.20010919.8.3-115"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, this 11th Annual Report on the Structural Funds may be the last one on the 1994-1999 programme, but it has many lessons to teach us. First of all, we agree with what the rapporteur, Mr Nogueira Román, says about the lack of a complete quantitative description or detailed explanations of these funds. Europe must have a genuine return on the funding it grants in order, on the one hand, to monitor that the projects are effectively carried out and that public monies are being put to good use and, on the other hand, to optimise the new programmes.
Furthermore, the citizens of my region keep making the same criticisms: too complicated, too much red tape, too slow. I think we do not give enough precedence to the small structural projects where simplicity and speed are of the essence if we want to respond to real needs on the ground.
I cannot help wondering about the contradiction between saying we want to give priority to employment, with reference in particular to the Lisbon European Council declarations, while at the same time paying so little attention to the small micro-enterprise and SME projects which, after all and as everyone knows, are the prime job creators. It is vital that all of us, beginning with the Commission, try to work more closely with all our fellow-citizens.
In conclusion, I want to protest about a practice that I personally find unfair and unfounded. What I mean is that the Commission could use a form of blackmail – and I am weighing my words here – by tying the funding to strict respect for the environmental obligations it lays down. I entirely agree about the growing need to respect our environment, but I am equally against this kind of pseudo-ecological diktat. I think that would be a real diversion of these funds which, let me remind you, are supposed to help finance job-creation and wealth-creation projects to combat the economic imbalances between the various European regions.
Since I know that economic cohesion remains unsatisfactory, let me end by asking what is really behind the Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund policy: are these funds designed to be a means of applying pressure or are they designed to provide genuine economic assistance? It is a question worth asking."@en1
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