Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-12-16-Speech-2-150"
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"en.20031216.4.2-150"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I should like to add my thanks to the rapporteur, to the Chairman of the Committee on Budgets, Mr Wynn, who has led negotiations with great authority, and also to the Italian Presidency. Credit must be given where it is due. Yes, we have had some long and difficult sessions during the conciliation process. Nonetheless, the Italian Presidency has, I believe, contributed greatly to the final outcome, notably with respect to the mobilisation of the flexibility instrument.
When one considers what is happening in Iraq and the prospects ahead of us, it is regrettable that we had to squabble over peanuts, while the needs of that region, and the role that Europe could play there, are much more pressing concerns than the EUR 95 million obtained at the conclusion of negotiations. Given the threats, recrimination and pettiness that have dogged us, is it any wonder that we had misgivings when voting on this budget? Six countries, including some founding Member States, now come and tell us that yet again we have to reduce a budget that is already ridiculously low in relation to needs and to the ambitions of the Europe represented by the letter of amendment under discussion this afternoon.
I believe that we have indeed sunk to a very low level in our debate on budgetary and fiscal policy. We understand that certain countries, by issuing their threats, actually wish both to launch a challenge to those countries that have, supposedly, prevented the Constitution from being adopted and, more importantly, to take a retrograde step, without taking into account either our institutional role or the ambitions that Europe ought to have. As Greater Europe is enlarging to 25 and later to 27, at a time when the new democracies are yearning for democracy, this threat consists of providing even less than we did for Spain and Portugal, and actually to provide less than the already meagre offering we are making today.
You are signatories, so why do you not abandon the CAP? I would say to President Chirac that doing that – to take just one example – would, even now, make it possible to save half of the budget, and redirect it towards other forms of finance. We could get rid of export refunds, given that, in any case, blatant examples of fraud have been uncovered. We have to get tough.
In this light, it is appalling that this weekend’s negotiations on Parliament’s role in the budgetary procedure have failed, as, indeed, have the negotiations as a whole. I believe that its success would be a step forward for Europe. As for Parliament’s role, I think it has shown more rigour, more European spirit in the work carried out to establish a budget. In this regard, I should like to pay tribute to Mr Mulder, the rapporteur, for retaining the cap, despite the fact that the Council has negotiated this way not by accident, but deliberately in order to reach the conclusions that we now know. So this is my tribute to Parliament for this budgetary year 2004."@en1
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