Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-24-Speech-2-185"
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"en.20020924.10.2-185"2
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".
Mr President, I shall begin by responding to Mr Deprez, who is an expert in budgetary matters, justice and home affairs. As far as Europol is concerned, Parliament did indeed set aside 5 million in the 2002 budget. Yet, we came up against an issue that you are very familiar with, that of the legal basis, since Europol was set up by an intergovernmental convention, and the only funding available under this intergovernmental convention is that derived from Member States’ contributions. We began by asking Europol what it would do with this 5 million and, after some time, we finally received a response whereby Europol, realistically and pragmatically, told us that it wanted to use EUR 3 400 000 out of the 5 million in order, as part of the fight against terrorism, to create a database and improve the communication systems between the security forces and intelligence services. Based on this information, we prepared what we believe to be a legal basis which is currently being examined by the Council. I share your hope that the Council will find a solution to the issue of the legal basis so that the EUR 3 400 000 can be used before the end of the year. As for the amount of time that has passed in between, I shall now explain the reason for this.
I mentioned the issue of the 5 million to illustrate that I do not fully agree with your comparison of the figures. The 5 million was not proposed again this year. This amount has not been reproduced in this year’s budget. We must compare the JHA budget less the 5 million from 2002, in other words EUR 114 million, with the EUR 119 million that we want to propose. I understand that this may not seem very much to you, but I am speaking under the watchful eye of Mrs Schreyer, who will not allow me to agree with you.
As far as the budget for asylum and immigration is concerned, I think that the budgetary line for cooperation with third countries was devoted, in 2002, mainly to aid operations for Afghan refugees and to the return of Afghan refugees. No one can question the priority given to Afghanistan.
My intention for the future is to grant the appropriations from this budgetary line, for which no increase is planned, primarily to third countries which are currently negotiating or have recently been negotiating readmission agreements with us. This will allow us to finance measures to accompany the execution of readmission agreements.
That said, I support your idea that we should have at our disposal a general overview of the budgetary situation of funds that the European Union is already providing, at the current time, for cooperation with third countries in the area of asylum and immigration. These funds do not only appear in the JHA budget; they also appear, and to a great extent, in the Relex budget, in the Country strategy papers, in the regional programmes such as MEDA or CARDS. That is why the Seville Council asked us to draw up a report on the effectiveness of financial resources that we provide for cooperation with third countries. We shall do this within the timeframe laid down by the Seville European Council and I shall take this opportunity to present to you the first mid-term assessment of the use of the European Refugee Fund over the period 2000-2002.
Regarding the issue of enlargement that Mrs Sbarbati has just raised, I must tell you that 60% of all funding granted in recent years from the justice and home affairs budget to candidate countries has been used to improve controls at the external borders of the candidate countries and that the programmes concerned, which are part of the PHARE initiative, will continue until 2006. We have an assessment of the results of these programmes compared to the results obtained by the candidate countries each year. I can tell you that this is the number one priority as far as the candidate countries are concerned.
Let us now move on from justice and home affairs and discuss information and communication. I can only support the idea that an information and communication policy must be a policy of proximity. That is why we proposed a new approach. I cannot promise you that the new approach will succeed. No one can. But I can assure you that the only solution is to form an interinstitutional partnership and work very closely with the Member States. If the Member States do not engage in an information and communication policy of proximity, we cannot do this from Brussels. In my view, this evidence cannot be contested.
You also know that the commitment from the Member States is totally voluntary. This means that the Commission and Parliament, in an interinstitutional framework, shall invite the Member States to become involved in this exercise, because we believe that, ultimately, it will be in everyone’s interest, not only the interest of the European institutions, but also of the Member States’ governments, to have a general public that is better informed of what is going on at European level. But, to do this, we must have the necessary human resources. That is why I called for the amounts which are included in the preliminary draft budget and which refer to the Prince and MEDIA correspondents working in the Member States’ capitals to be retained. Without these intruments, we will not be able to succeed in establishing this partnership with the Member States.
I would like to thank you for your support in this respect and I hope that we will be able to develop, on the basis of this partnership, a more proactive, clearer and better targeted information and communication policy."@en1
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