Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-14-Speech-2-157"
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"en.20041214.12.2-157"2
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".
Mr President, despite the temptation every year to try to fund Parliament’s interests and blame the Council for everything else, I believe we are presenting a good agreement today.
We have managed to mobilise the flexibility instrument in the sum of EUR 185 million and this is a new resource, which is greater than the ceiling of the financial perspectives. And with these new resources we have funded EUR 40 million of the decentralised agencies, which means that, for the first time, the Council recognises the need to provide new resources to comply with the new commitments.
We have also used EUR 100 million from the flexibility instrument to fund the reconstruction of Iraq, thereby leaving sufficient budgetary margin to fund Latin America, Asia, the Mediterranean policy, the fight against disease and poverty and the democracy and human rights initiative, amongst other things.
We are still concerned about the issue of payments, despite the fact that we have a statement by the three institutions on the commitment to present an amending budget in 2005 if necessary. The rigour and austerity we all apply – the three institutions – is one thing, but the indiscriminate saving of payment appropriations, which could jeopardise budgetary execution in 2005, is quite another. This Parliament will be particularly vigilant next year. Budgetary savings should never be at the expense of the Union’s needs.
The Council has cut payments in agriculture by EUR 1 billion, which, from a budgetary point of view, is unusual, and we await further explanations from the Council.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, we thank the Dutch Presidency for its pragmatism in the negotiation, which we expected, and its great willingness to reach consensus with Parliament, which has been a surprise. In any event, thank you, Minister, for the role you have played; thank you, Commissioner, for your mediation. I hope to cooperate closely with you during 2005. Thank you to the coordinators, the MEPs, the members of the Budgets secretariat and my own personal assistant.
It has been a pleasure to work with all of you on the drawing up of this 2005 draft budget, which I hope can be voted for on Thursday without too many problems.
The annual budgetary procedure is a perfect example of how interinstitutional cooperation should be. I have been a member of the Committee on Budgets for ten years and I have never believed that interinstitutional confrontation is the right way to resolve budgetary priorities. I believe that time has proven those of us who prefer agreement to be right.
The best conclusion for this 2005 draft budget would be for the three institutions to be moderately satisfied with the final result. It would be ridiculous to present this agreement as a victory for one institution over another, because I believe that Europe is made up of the three institutions.
It has been a very complicated year from a budgetary point of view. We began with a reduction in the ceilings for categories 3, 4 and 5, which has made it very difficult to comply with this Parliament’s priorities.
The Member States have applied budgetary rigour, as a consequence of the Stability Pact, and that must continue in the future.
We have had European elections: new MEPs, a new Chairman of the Committee on Budgets, who has worked very well and I congratulate him on that; a new Commission and a new Commissioner, who has also worked very well and I congratulate her on that as well, and I also congratulate former Commissioner Schreyer.
Ladies and gentlemen, since September of this year, I have been advocating the following budgetary strategy: to defend the European Parliament’s priorities with regard to the Lisbon objectives, information policy and the areas of security and justice. We defend these priorities because we are a political Parliament and we have promised our citizens a Europe with economic growth, job creation, better information on the present and the future of the Union, better control of migratory flows and greater security against crime and terrorism.
Our contribution to the creation of a genuine Community response to terrorism is this Parliament’s best possible tribute to the almost 200 Europeans murdered in Madrid on 11 March. I would like to thank all of you for your support.
It was fundamental to our strategy that the European agencies should not be funded unilaterally, at the expense of Parliament’s other priorities. If we want more agencies, we must provide new resources. That was our position and I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that this Parliament has achieved almost 100% of the strategy we established."@en1
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