Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-06-Speech-3-046"
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"en.20021106.6.3-046"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Prodi, President of the Commission, my group is broadly in favour of enlargement, because we see it as an historic opportunity to bring together the peoples of Europe, to consolidate peace on the continent and to transform this Union of 25 Member States – and in future 27 or 30 States – into the new global player that all those who oppose the excessive liberalism and unilateralism of American leaders would dearly love to see.
In this respect, I do not feel that it is very wise to conceal the problems. I shall therefore say this openly and honestly; the decisions of the Brussels European Council have left us unsatisfied. Of course, we welcome the fact that the list of the ten proposed members has been approved, but, in our view, the terms of the agreement reached between the Fifteen on the budgetary and financial issues for the 2004-2006 period do not augur well in terms of the ability, if not the will of the key European leaders to make a reality of a vision of Europe that lives up to the aspirations that I have just outlined.
We have already seen discrimination in the way that direct aid has been allocated to the farmers of the candidate countries. I was recently able to witness the extremely negative political effect of this measure in some of the countries concerned. In addition to this, the total amount of funding set aside by the Commission for structural actions has been reduced. We feel that this amount was already far from sufficient given the considerable work that needs to be done to combat disparities in development in the future, enlarged Union. It is in the interest of everyone to make a lasting success of enlargement, but the cost that this will certainly entail cannot be, as is the case at the moment, according to current plans, around 0.08% of the fifteen Member States’ GDP for each of the first three years. The medium-term objective must be very ambitious: to provide job security and training for all men and women throughout the whole of the enlarged Europe, to consolidate public services that are worthy of the name, to achieve genuinely sustainable development in all 25 Member States, and as a result combat social and fiscal dumping. We must also redefine the tasks and powers of the European Central Bank and do away with the obsessive rationing of worthwhile public expenditure, which will require a rapid and in-depth revision of the financial perspectives. All these issues must be laid on the table and debated openly, involving the national parliaments and social players.
At this very moment in Florence, the European Social Forum is setting an example by bringing together citizens and young people in particular from across the continent to discuss the challenges of society and civilisation that we are all facing. If we make a success of enlargement, we will also meet their expectations. I fear that, with the Brussels European Council, we are falling far short of them."@en1
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