Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-101"
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"en.20011001.7.1-101"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the framework proposal before us establishes the succession of the European Community to the ECSC. According to the proposal, the net revenue deriving from the investments of the assets of the Coal and Steel Research Fund would constitute revenue in the EU budget. This revenue would be earmarked for a specific purpose, namely for financing research projects in the sectors related to the coal and steel industry. The Research Fund would be managed by the Commission. Out of the amounts yielded by the Fund, 27.2% would be allocated to the coal sector and 72.8% to the steel sector. This breakdown could be modified only by a unanimous decision by the Council. Lastly, the proposal states that the administrative expenditure resulting from the liquidation, investment and management of the Research Fund will be covered by the general budget.
In my opinion, and in this I am supported by the coordinators of the political groups in the Committee on Budgets, if the line I have taken in the legislative amendments is endorsed by this House, before expressing the European Parliament’s opinion, we should enter into negotiations with the Council and the Commission, seeking to increase our institution’s role. Therefore, when we have voted on the legislative amendments, I will ask the presidency to postpone the vote on the legislative resolution until the possibility of an agreement with the Commission and the Council increasing Parliament’s role can be verified. I hope that you will agree with this line of approach.
Ladies and gentlemen, in this brief summary I have not forgotten our role: quite simply, in its future form, what was the first European Treaty, the first stone set in place for the creation of a united Europe, completely abolishes our institution. I am firmly opposed to the approach of the Commission, whose framework proposal provides for Parliament merely to be consulted on matters concerning the fund’s financial and technical guidelines. Such a passive role is envisaged for us that it is completely contradictory to the present-day requirements of transparency and accountability, and Parliament would have even less power than it does in budgetary matters.
In my report, I made a number of demands to the Council: firstly, I asked for the codecision procedure to be applied; secondly, I requested the full budgetisation of the annual interests of the fund as preallocated revenue, through the creation of a specific budget line in the revenue and expenditure side of the budget following the principles of budgetary specificity and neutrality, in line with the provisions of the Interinstitutional Agreement and the Financial Regulation; thirdly, I requested that the related administrative costs, estimated at around EUR 8.4 million, should be included in this budget line, for otherwise they would have to be met from the general budget.
In addition, I included the possibility of revising the ratio of appropriations dedicated for coal and steel research respectively, as production will increase as a result of enlargement. I have noticed that the resolution tabled before the House still contains a reference to the ECB, which I would ask you to disregard: this is an amendment which I have withdrawn and which has remained in the resolution due to a technical error.
With regard to the request for the codecision procedure to be applied, I would stress that the Commission’s legislative proposal is based on the Treaties and on the Nice Protocol, which states that the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission after consulting the European Parliament, is to adopt all the necessary provisions for the implementation of this Protocol. In practice, Parliament is deprived of any power, despite the fact that the administrative expenditure of the Coal and Steel Fund would have to be met from the general budget.
This means that Parliament would have to approve this additional expenditure and give discharge to the Fund without having any influence at all over the implementation of its activities. My request for the codecision procedure to be applied is not, therefore, a request for a different legal basis to be used, just for reference to be made to a different article. Indeed, the Commission’s document refers to the Treaty establishing the European Community, without specifying any particular article, and to the Protocol annexed to the Treaty of Nice, Article 2 – under which the European Parliament has consultation powers only – a Treaty which, however, is not yet in force and which it is highly unlikely will become effective before July 2002.
Consequently, we are in a very fluid situation which has never occurred in the past and will never occur again, since the ECSC Treaty is the only Treaty to have an expiry date, and I would stress this. Moreover, even if the Protocol annexed to the Treaty of Nice does come into force, it only refers to the procedure for approving the package as a whole and makes no mention of the multiannual decisions. I therefore propose to request that the codecision procedure be applied, as laid down in Article 2.5.1 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in this I believe and hope I can count on the same support from this House that I received in the Committee on Budgets.
Then, with regard to the full budgetisation of interests and the possibility of the administrative costs being met from this budget line, Parliament gave its consent in 1998 for all the interests of the Fund to be used for research.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I said before, the situation which we have to address is highly unusual and will certainly never be repeated: we are dealing with the only Treaty to have an expiry date, the succession of the European Community to which depends largely on a Treaty which has not yet been ratified and may well not be ratified in time."@en1
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