Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-14-Speech-2-211"
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"en.20041214.13.2-211"2
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"Madam President, the long-term financial perspective is an important document. It will place a restriction on the annual budgets right up until 2013. This will be crucial to choices of areas and to how great a commitment the EU can assume during the next seven to eight years.
In recent days, the Commission has presented its view of the long-term budget. The new Commission has taken over the old Commission’s proposal, or what is known as the Prodi package. This means a significant rise in expenditure. In the case of some countries, it is a question of a 50% real increase. That is something I find unacceptable.
My view is that the new Commission should have listened more closely to the views of the six largest net contributors. They demanded that the financial perspective should include an expenditure ceiling of 1% of gross national income. There should be a ceiling not only for payments, but also for commitments. It is not acceptable, as the Commission proposes, to allow the commitments to proliferate to 1.27% of gross national income. That is the upper limit that the Members have undertaken to pay. After 2013, there will be no way of expanding over and above general economic growth unless all the countries agree to give up their right of veto. That is not something I believe they will do.
The Commission therefore proposes that the EU introduce some form of EU tax. We are definitely and strongly opposed to the EU’s being given its own right of taxation. Without monitoring by the individual Member States, there is no limit upon the EU’s ambition to grow into a federal superstate. Each Member State should allow its parliament to vote on the EU’s financial perspective before the Council of Ministers takes its decision so that the decision is not taken secretly but openly and clearly, with people aware of the financial commitments they will assume.
So that the national parliaments might be provided with a sound basis for their decisions, the Commission should prepare a draft alternative perspective contained within the 1% expenditure ceiling we have proposed. There is otherwise a palpable risk of the Commission’s ultimately being forced into ill thought-out cutbacks in expenditure and commitments, instead of having properly considered prioritising that makes it possible to keep the promises made to the new countries."@en1
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