Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-01-Speech-1-102"
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"en.20011001.7.1-102"2
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"Mr President, Mr Turchi deserves our agreement. What the Council is offering us is a bit rich. In Nice, fundamental democratic values were invoked, and in the same breath the ECSC Treaty is annulled and a research fund established, without the possibility of Parliament having any part in deciding the matter. I must say, they really have a nerve!
Back to the matter in hand. We are, in fact, funeral orators here, for we are burying a treaty which, almost fifty years ago, was the prelude to the European Union, but whose death is a remarkable one. It is a death and a rebirth together, for other treaties arose from this one, and at the end of the day, the European Union is based on what it had in mind.
In this context, I would like to point out that Robert Schuman at the Paris Conference in 1950 – held on 9 May, which is of course our Europe Day – observed that this was the first stage of European federation. He did not speak in terms of a coalition of nation states but of a European Federation, showing himself to be much more far-sighted than many of our statesmen and stateswomen and, indeed, than those among us who cannot yet bring themselves to utter the word 'federation'. I am just pointing this out; I assume that it will be mentioned in the history books.
Secondly, this treaty is now to give birth to a research fund. Mr Turchi has pointed out that the money is not simply being returned to the Member States, but is being invested in a fund which is in future to finance research into coal and steel. This is sensible, but it does create problems. One is that Parliament has no control over this fund. I mentioned this contradiction at the outset. A second is that it creates difficulties for the research framework programme. What demarcation is there between the research framework programme, which we decide on democratically, and the Research Fund?
Thirdly, what is to happen to the acceding countries? Every one of them wanting to belong to the Research Fund must in fact make an initial contribution to it in order to take any part in it. Even that creates more than one class of research in the European Union. What I suggest – something which has been taken on board by the Research Committee – is that we should resolve this conflict, and, moreover, in a positive way by, in the course of the next few years, creating from this Research Fund a Research Foundation which would develop alongside the research framework programme. Funds could be paid into it by Member States, but also from private sources – it is above all the private sources I am thinking of – in order to finance research projects other than into coal and steel.
In the meantime, we are fortunate in having many affluent people who do not know what to do with their money when they reach a certain age, and who make donations. Trust funds come into being, and this Foundation can be built up by donations of this sort and so be able to concern itself with subject areas far more wide-ranging than coal and steel. I hope that Parliament will agree to this recommendation. The consequence would be that the Commission would reconsider and would perhaps present a report on how this could be translated into action.
We have some experience of this in Germany. Parallel with State support for research, we have a research foundation which has functioned well ever since the 1920s and uses a minimum of bureaucracy in putting wind in the sails of German research. It would be no bad idea to do that on a European scale.
Let me finally observe that proposals 1 to 5 in my report are founded on an error. I recommend that we should not vote on them. They are in any case covered by their inclusion in the Turchi report and in the amendments. I therefore recommend that there should be no vote on them. I might add that they were not voted on in committee either. This really is a mistake. Apart from that, I hope that this research fund really will give rise, in the next five to ten years, to a second support for research in the European Union. We would thereby be making good this undemocratic error which is, in this day and age, really intolerable."@en1
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