Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-23-Speech-2-271"
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".
Mr President, I would like to thank Mrs Miguélez and everyone who has spoken in this debate.
The regulation, as it is drawn up, allows us to move forward and improve on what we have at the moment. You have contributed 11 amendments which, in our opinion, help to clarify and improve the regulation. The Commission can therefore accept the 11 amendments presented by the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism.
I would like to end by stressing that the NUTS Regulation will be an important instrument for achieving comparable and impartial regional statistics in the European Union, on which we will be able to base the regional policy which we will decide on, politically, at the appropriate time. Thank you very much.
I would like to start by clarifying two points that seem essential to me. It is up to you to interpret whether statistical classification can have a political impact or not; but I can assure you that that is not the objective of this document, nor was it the Commission’s intention. The document is based on a Eurostat proposal which intends to achieve the most equitable treatment possible for all the countries and regions of the European Union. Nor does this document in any way prejudice regional policy: we do not know who will be objective 1, who will be objective 2 or whether the current regional policy system will be the same in the future. We are talking about statistics here; and we are talking about making the statistics better and as equitable as possible for all the countries of the Union.
What is our intention? Our intention is that a practice we have been applying up until now should become a rule. And we want to do this because it seems essential to us to give a legal character to something which so far has been a consensus between the Member States and the Commission. But it also seems essential to us as a means of establishing principles for enlargement and in order to continue applying the same criteria that have been applied up to this point. Until now, the NUTS had no legal basis, now they are acquiring it: this is the objective of the present regulation.
What criteria have we used for the definition of the NUTS? Our document is essentially based on three principles. The first is that the NUTS are legislative regions; we have therefore tried to define their territory in accordance with existing legislative political definitions: a good definition, recognised by the Member States, of units which in many cases already have governmental structures and comparable statistics, which makes them sufficiently reliable.
The second principle is that we propose three hierarchical levels of NUTS. In your amendments you have gone further and asked for at least three levels. With our current room for manoeuvre, from the point of view of producing statistics, to work with more than three levels would create financial problems for Eurostat. This is one reason, but, furthermore, we believe that three levels will provide us with sufficient and valid information.
The third principle is to try to make the regional statistics comparable. This is why the size of the NUTS has to be as homogenous as possible. But we are also aware that there are historic realities and legal situations in each of the countries which mean that this principle cannot be applied in an automatic or mechanical way, and that specific situations have to be taken into account.
There is a consensus between Member States that these principles we have been using until now should also form the ideas behind the new regulation, as I have already mentioned, not only for application in our countries as they stand, but also in the countries which are going to join us in the coming years. That is why the regulation responds to a series of objectives which you have been able to debate in depth and for which you have made some corrections. We are heading towards having NUTS that are classified in accordance with the current regional systems, because we believe that this is the most effective instrument we have today for the collection, calculation and diffusion of regional statistics. Furthermore, in the regulation we set criteria for defining regions in such a way that the candidate countries will have guidelines for regional classification within their own territory. This objective is essential at this time.
I would also like to stress the need for statistics to be as comparable and as impartial as possible. These statistics must not be produced and used for political ends, whatever they may be. It would be very difficult to establish political interests which undoubtedly would lead us to clear contradictions. This issue is essential for the Union’s regional policy, but, as I said before, statistical classification must not prejudice the nature of the Union’s future regional policy.
We intend to create clear rules for future modifications to the classification of NUTS because this will prevent future disputes, which have arisen in the past. Modifications are inevitable. We cannot speak of absolutely permanent situations, but NUTS must not be modified too often and of course we must have a system which is based on certain rules and certain pre-established principles. We therefore believe it to be appropriate that modifications would not take place within a time period of three years, or else we will be faced with monitoring problems."@en1
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