Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-07-Speech-4-170"
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"en.20050707.26.4-170"2
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".
I offer warm greetings to you, Mr President, and to all of the Members of this House, on my behalf and on behalf of my fellow Socialist Member of Parliament and friend, Mr Capoulas Santos.
In light of the specific features of the outermost regions, such as remoteness, insularity, small size, difficult climate and economic dependence on a few products, all of which combined have a detrimental effect on their development, these regions rightly enjoy special protection, which is enshrined in Article 299 of the Treaty. This protection is, moreover, the result of successive decisions by Parliament, the proceedings of the Seville European Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, and the conclusions of the third report on economic and social cohesion. Accordingly, it must, as a matter of urgent priority, be translated fully into practical reality.
The Commission issued a timely communication aimed at establishing a stronger partnership for the outermost regions entitled ‘a stronger partnership’, which deserves a favourable response. The report before us – on the proposal for a Council regulation laying down specific measures for agriculture in the outermost regions – forms part of the process of implementing that strategy. The agriculture sector is hugely important to these regions, and this report represents substantial and noteworthy progress in this regard.
Nevertheless, the initiative can and must be improved considerably, and this report by Mr Freitas can play a substantial role in achieving such an improvement. I wish to congratulate Mr Freitas on his dedication and positive attitude during the process of drawing up the report, and those congratulations are extended to all of those Members who were actively involved and who made relevant contributions towards finding appropriate solutions to the specific characteristics of each region. Special mention, in this connection, goes to the draftsmen Mr Casaca of the Committee on Budgets, Mr Jardim Fernandes of the Committee on Regional Development and Mr Assis of the Committee on International Trade.
Although the proposal for a regulation before us does not provide for changing the sources of funding or the pace of support, it will, however, introduce greater flexibility in implementing different measures and better adaptation to the specific features of each outermost region. This will be achieved by means of stepping up participation in the decision-making process, which is a positive step and one that the Socialist Group in the European Parliament wholeheartedly supports.
The Commission’s proposal suffers, however, from shortcomings and gaps on a number of aspects. We now have the opportunity to plug those gaps, on the platform of the broad consensus that the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development managed to attract through the proposals it adopted, not to mention the opinions adopted by other committees. We therefore have ample reason to call on Members from all sides of this House to use their vote on the relevant amendments that have been tabled to express their solidarity with some of the more problematic regions of the EU. After all, we want to see the Union become more economically and socially cohesive.
We also call on the Commission to welcome the most relevant proposals adopted in this House and we feel sure that both it and Parliament will be equal to the task of meeting the legitimate expectations of the people and authorities of the outermost regions. Today we have seen a degree of openness on the part of Mr Michel; time will tell if there is more to come in the future.
This is the only way in which the objectives which were clearly and objectively set out in the preamble to the Council’s proposal for a regulation under discussion and which we fully endorse can be achieved more satisfactorily and more quickly. What we really need is to work towards strengthening economic, social and territorial cohesion in Europe."@en1
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