Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-265"
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"en.20011023.13.2-265"2
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".
Mr President, the Committee on Regional Policy is pleased with the initiative to lay down the classification of territorial units for statistics in a Regulation, thereby providing it with a legal basis. Until now, because there has been no such legal basis, changes and updatings have been carried out by means of gentlemen's agreements between Member States and Eurostat.
I believe that statistics are neither neutral nor politically innocent. I therefore believe that this proposed regulation is of great political importance, not only because it will be applied when determining which regions will receive Structural Funds, but also because it provides a certain vision of Europe, of its territorial reality, of its regional and provincial organisation and hence of its disparities and imbalances.
The proposal divides the territory of the States into statistical units organised hierarchically into three levels, and proposes criteria for the definition of these regions in the candidate countries, criteria which demand that they continue to be defined on the basis of territorial organisation and within the current demographic borders.
The Committee on Regional Policy shares the objectives which the Commission expresses in its proposed Regulation, but nevertheless considers that the classification obtained is not entirely suited to those objectives, which means that it is perceived by some citizens as an artificial division of European territory. In fact, in the annex, the Commission restricts itself to presenting the existing administrative territorial units in each Member State, mixing them with others which do not have the same institutional character, which means that there is a clear lack of homogeneity.
The Committee on Regional Policy believes that the proposal should include a European approach which is capable of overcoming the framework of borders between States. In this respect, NUTS level 1 should take account of large territorial units which transcend these borders, which are intended to serve as a basis for the future planning of European territory. Ladies and gentlemen, NUTS level 1 has clear shortcomings. Only the regions of Germany and Belgium are considered units, while in other Member States, such as Spain, France or Italy, NUTS 1 level corresponds to enormous conglomerates or regions which are totally artificial and almost always arbitrary.
At the other extreme, the proposal names the Finnish Island of Aland as a NUTS 1 unit, despite the fact that its 25 000 inhabitants are way below the minimum of 3 million required for that demographic bracket. I still believe that the Commission’s proposal should have been more daring, more coherent and, perhaps, if you will allow me, more European.
There are even more disparities in level 3, where a single Member State, Germany, has more units than eight Member States put together: France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg. In relation to the surface area of the territorial units, the imbalance is also evident, since in the proposal the prevailing criterion is population rather than geographical size. The Committee on Regional Policy urges the Commission and the Member States to work towards the creation of NUTS level 4 and even NUTS level 5, which would represent local bodies.
The Committee on Regional Policy is presenting Parliament with eleven amendments to this proposal. I must point out that this report was approved in committee by 43 votes in favour and one abstention. As rapporteur, I support these amendments and reject the other amendments presented in Parliament, which were rejected in committee. I believe that the report approved by the Committee on Regional Policy should be accepted by Council and the Commission. Its acceptance could prevent a second reading and a conciliation procedure and would allow the Regulation to enter into force on 1 January 2002. If that is the case, we should be pleased that we have produced a legal text providing the basis for determining the territorial units necessary for gathering statistical information in this great Europe of the future. Let us not fall into the trap of statistics being the art of indicating that two people have eaten well, when, in fact, one of them has eaten two chickens and the other has eaten none."@en1
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