Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-13-Speech-4-037"
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"en.20051013.3.4-037"2
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".
Madam President, thank you very much for a very good debate. We have listened very carefully. Mrs Krehl raised the point of the financial perspective. All I can say is that I could not agree more. I think Europe is simply unable to absorb a longer period of uncertainty without very strong negative political, economic and social consequences, and that is why the lack of a good decision in December will cause damage that European citizens cannot afford anymore.
Regarding the debate on the urban dimension, I see that debate as a broad and strong support to this need to strengthen the urban dimension in our cohesion policy. Once again I want to say how much I appreciate the efforts of Mr Beaupuy and of the other Members of the Parliament who worked with him. I also want to assure you that we look at cities and towns on a Europe-wide basis. We look at all the problems and all the contributions of Europe-wide cities and towns and the contribution to the change in Europe. We are also aware of how much we can learn from towns and cities in Europe. There is an enormous amount of best practice which we have taken from the Urban Programme and I hope we will be able to use it in the future.
Two or three specific issues were also raised. One is the gender issue and the issue of equal status between men and women. In this context I would like to say two things. One, with regard to regulation, we have the provisions in the general regulation, but – also in response to many of your comments – what we have done over the last weeks when revising the position of the Commission was to propose adding the gender dimension for the first time in the history of cohesion policy to the ERDF regulation. It has not yet been approved by the Commission, but I hope it will be a major step forward.
I also want to say that we will take into account the gender dimension in our consultation on the working paper on urban issues which we are currently working on.
Housing was mentioned in different contexts. As you know, the housing issue is among those few issues which are still outstanding in the negotiations in the Council, in addition to some other very difficult issues on which Parliament has also voted, including cofinancing rates and eligibility of VAT. My understanding is that these questions will be solved in the context of the debate on the financial perspective, not in the context of the negotiations on the regulation.
On the Baltic Sea area, I want to say that within the current Interreg Programme it is one of the best – if not the best – performing programmes. I also hope that in the future we will have under the third objective this Baltic zone for transnational dimension. It is under major threat because, as you know, the budget proposal under the Luxembourg Presidency for the European territorial corporation objective in particular as regards the transnational dimension has been drastically reduced.
I now turn to the report. In response to Mr van Nistelrooij, with regard to timing, we are working on the document on urban issues. We will I think start this or next week interservice consultations in the Commission. I hope I will be able to say something when I come in November to the meeting with Mr Beaupuy’s group, but generally all I can say at this stage is that we would like to have the first discussion with the Member States already in December and then, as I have said, continue the consultations until more or less March. Then, maybe – but we will have to discuss this – sometime around March we could have a joint conference on those issues. However, we have to discuss it and see what we can do together.
I certainly look forward to further cooperation with your Intergroup on urban and housing issues and I once again thank you very much for the discussion today."@en1
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