Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-17-Speech-2-151"
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"en.20021217.5.2-151"2
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"Mr President, personally and on behalf of my group, I should like to thank both rapporteurs, Mr Färm and Mr Stenmarck, very much for their work and congratulate them on the final result. For the sake of balance, I should like to mention a number of positive and a number of negative points, but I shall begin with the negative ones. For me, these are the payments, and I fully support what Mr Virrankoski has said about them. Parliament usually fights the battle over final allocations, that is, over promises, while the Council is mainly interested in keeping payments as low as possible and hence rather less in keeping promises.
During the arbitration process, Parliament agreed to the reduction of the budgeted payments. I understand why but I am not happy about it. We run the risk of the waiting time becoming longer, of organisations and other recipients of what we might call ‘cash in hand’ having to wait longer for their money, which surely cannot be the intention. This diminishes the credibility of the institutions, but perhaps the Council or the Member States feel they cannot agonise too much about this.
Another problem I have relates to the reduction in loans for food and humanitarian aid by EUR 55 million. Of course I am aware that those in favour say that this is just a simple accounting device and that the total numbers remain the same. But that is exactly my problem, because loans are remaining the same, though we already know that extra funds will be required, namely for the Horn of Africa. The funds remain the same, but the number of people requiring money from the budget line is increasing.
Then, by way of adjusting the balance: three positive points: my group is very pleased about the freezing of the funds of KEDO. We have always found it regrettable that we have never opted for a lasting solution to the North-Korean energy question, namely investment in energy-efficient and renewable sources of energy. Thanks to the European Union, about a thousand North Koreans are being trained in modern nuclear technology. Now it emerges that North Korea is not keeping to its part of the agreements and is after all investing in its own nuclear weapons programme. That is why we must now once again re-examine KEDO carefully, and as we see it wind it up. We can easily find an alternative use for that twenty million.
Then there are the posts for the Commission: surely that must be seen as an important achievement in this set of budgetary negotiations. Through yet another odd accounting operation we have created scope in next year’s budget for five hundred new posts in the Commission. And that is good news. But if I have just heard the Commissioner correctly, none of those five hundred posts is going to DG Environment, and I find that regrettable because it is of course also very important that environmental regulations should also be complied with and monitored in the candidate states. Therefore they might wish to re-examine this, since we have after all agreed collectively that the European Union has three priorities, one of which is sustainable development. Hence, it would make very good sense if a substantial number of those five hundred posts were to go to strengthening DG Environment.
My final point, Mr President, concerns the animal experimentation centre at Rijswijk. I can already hear honourable Members sighing that this story has dragged on and on, but it is now on the point of resolution. We must apply clear, ethical preconditions to the experiments on monkeys that are carried out there. If there is an alternative available or the tests are not objectively necessary, the European Union should no longer subsidise these tests. In any case, an end should be put to tests on hominids. They are ethically unacceptable and I hope I can count on your support."@en1
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