Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-11-Speech-2-134"
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"en.20011211.7.2-134"2
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"Mr President, first I would like to heartily congratulate and thank the budget’s main rapporteur, Mr Costa Neves, with regard to his excellent draft budget and his constructive cooperation. Likewise, I wish to thank the second budget rapporteur, Kathalijne Buitenweg, and also, in particular, the Chairman of the Committee on Budgets, Terrence Wynn, for his skilful and constructive leadership of the Committee.
The budget for 2002 now being debated is a moderate and disciplined one. Appropriations have grown by just 2%, which is clearly below the figure for the financial perspectives. The European Parliament has shown an enormous sense of responsibility, which our group values highly. This budget is a considerable improvement on the Council’s first proposal. The agricultural budget is realistic. There are more funds available to cover outstanding commitments under categories 2 to 4, and there is a common call to use them to clear arrears. The reform of the Commission proceeds, and any expenditure that should not in fact arise, has been cut. We particularly appreciate the fact that no negative reserve, that is to say, no uncovered appropriation, has been adopted.
In the first reading of the budget some cuts were made to external actions, such as the western Balkans CARDS programme. Now we have been able to prevent most of these cuts. A total of 206.4 million euros is being proposed for the Balkans. Furthermore, the CARDS programme had already been given 63 million euros out of this year’s budget transfers, so all in all the programme is returning to what was proposed in the Council’s draft budget. This was immensely important for my group. For the Commission’s reform 317 posts are being reserved, which guarantees that the reform will proceed. Of these, 105 are in reserve, and our group hopes that at least the majority of them may still be released. A flexible instrument had to be adopted once again this year. A compromise decision was reached on its use, according to which Spain and Portugal will see the structure of their fisheries fleets revitalised with the aid of 170 million euros, plus another 27 million in 2003. Thirty million euros are to be spent on solving border problems associated with new Member States, with a further 15 million being spent on this next year. Our group supports all these decisions."@en1
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