Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-183"
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"en.20050906.31.2-183"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Lewis’ presentation today of the 2006 budget has confirmed the impression that Parliament’s delegation took away from the Conciliation Committee meeting held on 15 July. Contrary to its name, this meeting resembled a cataloguing of differences rather than a conciliation process. It is indeed true that no one expects consensus to have been reached at this point in the year, but it cannot be denied that the standpoints of the EU’s two budgetary authorities on the 2006 budget are poles apart. Even the consensus that has been reached on important but secondary issues, such as modulation, or in other words the transfer of funds to the tune of EUR 655 million from Heading 1 to rural development, cannot hide this fact. Our goal is to reach agreement on the budget, but this task will be far from easy.
The European Parliament is a political body, the members of which, having entered into a contract with their voters one year ago, are mindful of their commitments. Much was said at the time, and is still said, about the need to complete EU enlargement and to invest in cohesion to this end, as well as about the need to breathe fresh life into the Lisbon Strategy and to fund the EU’s new ambitions on the international stage. At the same time, however, there is no getting away from the fact that we also committed ourselves to strict budgetary discipline one year ago. The voting public is firm in its condemnation of undisciplined and hence wasteful spending, yet political ambitions and goals that lack financial backing are nothing but hollow words.
Parliament must consider the 2006 budget in terms of the experience it gained last year. With our backs to the wall, so to speak, we agreed to a level of payments that falls short of our needs in 2005, as has already become clear from the level of expenditure so far this year. Furthermore, the 2006 budget must be regarded as a stepping stone to a new Financial Perspective. It was with these two factors in mind that we decided that the Commission’s initial proposals of 1.02% of GNI, which is nearly EUR 7 billion below the ceiling set in the Financial Perspective for 2006, were unsatisfactory. A huge gap exists between these 2006 budget proposals and the Commission’s proposals for payments in 2007, which will be the first year of the new Financial Perspective. This means that it is even more difficult to understand or tolerate the cuts made by the Council, taking payments to just over 1% of GNI.
This year we have seen the Council taking a more selective and less mechanical approach to budgetary cuts, and I should like to dwell very briefly on the individual headings in turn. The modulation that has been agreed from Heading 1 can be counted as a joint success. At the same time, however, we expect the Commission to put forward proposals regarding agricultural spending in the long term, as a basis for further discussion.
Parliament has not been slow to notice that cohesion emerged relatively unscathed from the Council’s cuts, but the preliminary reports that have reached us on the Structural Funds suggest that use of the Funds in 2005 will not correspond to the level specified in the Council’s draft, but will be equal to, if not higher than, the Commission’s initial proposal. The pressure is starting to be felt most in Heading 3, that is to say in the field of internal policies, where the largest cuts in relative terms have been made, amounting to over EUR 500 million. This makes a nonsense of the goals of the Lisbon Strategy, which include investment in research and in small and medium-sized enterprises, and will also make it impossible for Parliament to implement its priorities. As far as Heading IV is concerned, however, it is not so much Parliament’s priorities that are in conflict, but the British Presidency’s own statements.
The arbitrary cuts of around 4% that have been made to all areas, with the exception of the much-favoured common foreign and security policy, will make it impossible for us to meet the never-ending stream of fresh challenges. The latter will not merely relate to the tsunami-hit countries or to Iraq and Afghanistan, since the need will arise to fund assistance for other regions affected by natural disasters. Compensation for sugar producers presents us with a further problem, and the Commission has also raised the issue of administrative expenses, with the possibility of a freeze on the recruitment of employees from the new Member States.
To sum up, our debate on the 2006 budget is taking place against a general backdrop of pessimism. Yet the European Union is in urgent need of good news, and agreement on both the 2006 budget and sensible figures for the Financial Perspective would be exactly the news it has been hoping for. Such agreement could serve to renew people’s faith in the European Union, and it is our common responsibility and task to ensure that it is achieved."@en1
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