Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-25-Speech-3-228"
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"en.20050525.22.3-228"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen – those of you who are still here despite the late hour – first and foremost, I should like to express my thanks for the good cooperation, not only with all of the groups in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, but also and above all with the Commission and its officials, as well as with the Council Presidency and all of the staff in Parliament and in our groups. It was this that made it possible for this really very constructive report to become a reality.
It cannot be said often enough that in the battle over the EU budget, our ambitious aim must be to ensure that appropriate resources are allocated to rural development, the second pillar. Commissioner, you have my support in this fight for a balanced budget for the future of rural development.
Commissioner, you said just now that you cannot accept all of our amendments. You will be aware, however, that they were adopted unanimously in the Committee on Agriculture. I nevertheless hope that Parliament will vote in favour of this report tomorrow by a very large majority.
This report on the financing of the common agricultural policy is also – as you have already mentioned, Commissioner – closely connected to the report on rural development. I am delighted that we have managed to keep to the timetable that we set ourselves when I was appointed to draft this report, and that we are going to be able to vote on it in the plenary while we are still under the Luxembourg Presidency. This was the only way to make it possible for the rural development programmes to continue seamlessly in the new planning period.
As has been said, this is a very technical administrative dossier. On the positive side, it should be noted that this proposal genuinely simplifies the structure of the current legal bases for financing, in particular in respect of rural development policy in the period 2007 to 2013. The political objective is to simplify the system and make it easier to understand, and of course also to have better and more efficient controls, disbursement of funds and transparency, which all of us here can only welcome.
In the future, these two funds – the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development – will be able to work very well. I also welcome the fact that the Commission intends to introduce stricter monitoring, evaluation and reporting mechanisms, to ensure that the agreed ceilings are complied with.
We all know how complicated accounting procedures for EU funds are in the farming sector, and so the proposed increase in efficiency and transparency is also to be welcomed. The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development is using the corresponding Commission proposal to create a common legal framework for financing these two components of the common agricultural policy. In the committee, the seven amendments were adopted that the Commission is now unfortunately not able to accept in full.
Although this report only lays down the technical arrangements for implementing the financing, one point has to be mentioned in this context: if the European Union is really to achieve its ambitious goals on rural development, then adequate financial resources must be allocated to the Rural Development Fund.
Rural areas have a high status in the European Union, particularly in the ten new Member States. More than half of our EU citizens live in rural areas, which make up around 90% of EU territory. The issue is to ensure that these regions remain worthwhile places to live – attractive and active – thus creating a viable world in which people can live and work. The development and implementation of positive strategies and prospects for the future are a top priority.
The 2003 reform of the common agricultural policy brought permanent changes for the European agriculture and forestry sectors, and in the process of this reform rural areas have become even more important, so as to meet the Lisbon and Gothenburg objectives. Rural development policy is a policy for people everywhere in the European Union."@en1
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