Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-17-Speech-2-152"
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"en.20021217.5.2-152"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start, if I may, by congratulating this year’s two rapporteurs, Mr Färm and Mr Stenmarck, on their excellent work. The 2003 budget has not been a simple budget, nor has it been easy in political terms. Indeed, it is a budget in which there is tension between demands which absolutely have to be met now, such as the financing of the administrative expenditure to prepare for enlargement, and political priorities such as support for
Afghanistan. There is tension between commitments which must be made good, such as the funding of the restructuring of the Portuguese and Spanish fleets – on which, at last, we appear to have reached agreement – and new urgent measures, such as the need to fund the European Union’s participation in the Global Health Fund. It is a budget which, in my view, suffers throughout from the failure to revise the Financial Perspective established in 1999 at Berlin: a Financial Perspective which I believe is now inadequate and can only become politically more unacceptable in the coming years. Nor can the – albeit significant – results achieved in conciliation in November lead to any lasting change in the
situation. For example, the joint declaration whereby the Council undertakes to consult Parliament before taking any decision which might involve financial commitments in the field of common foreign and security policy is, over and above any possible objections, an important milestone, a further step towards the full involvement of the European Parliament in a strategic sector, towards the development of a more powerful, more secure Union.
That, however, does not change the fact that the Heading 4 ceiling is still too low, not to say stiflingly low. What will we do when the Council asks us to authorise it to make a financial commitment because of new international political developments? Will we refuse to give it the authorisation on the grounds that there are not enough funds or will we accept the challenge and undertake to find the money, somehow, somewhere? Now, for example, we have to find funds for the problems in Galicia. What would we have done, for example, in the case of Afghanistan? What would we have done in the case of the Balkans?
Not to mention Heading 3. Indeed, the European Union’s commitments increase every year in the field of internal policy too. With every passing year, there are new, costly multiannual programmes of huge political import which, as such, must be processed and adhered to. What, however, will we do when there is no longer a margin for any political initiative that Parliament might want to set in motion? What will we do when the distinction between compulsory expenditure and non-compulsory expenditure is reduced to a distinction between expenditure on which Parliament does not have the ultimate say and expenditure which Parliament cannot alter for fear that the European institutions will lose face? And that is just to mention two headings.
I therefore call upon all the Members to make representations to their delegations and to their governments to ensure that the situation is avoided where, subsequently, when all is said and done, everything we have planned for in this budget, in this conciliation, is frustrated because of lack of resources, and to ensure that it becomes the joint objective of each one of us, irrespective of our political affiliation."@en1
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