Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-10-24-Speech-1-082"
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"en.20051024.15.1-082"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, there is much agreement in this House where your proposals are concerned. Cooperation has been excellent. We have heard what young people have been saying to us, first through the European elections and then through the referendums. If we want to make a success of European policy, it is with young people that we have to start.
The new ‘Youth in Action’ programme gives pride of place to the promotion of active citizenship, and the 73 amendments that this House has put forward are intended to make some further improvements to your proposal. We want to respond to what young people themselves told us in the course of the consultation process, and in so doing we are taking the most important step, namely fostering solidarity and mutual understanding among young people, supporting the new neighbourhood policy and bringing together the various interested parties at national, regional and European level.
As regards the five actions comprised in the new programme, and which you, Commissioner, have just outlined, we have proposed – in contrast to ‘Lifelong Learning’ – that minimum funding be provided for each individually, with at least 30% of the budget going to traditional youth exchange in Action 1, 23% to the European Voluntary Service, and 4% to the new ‘Youth for the World’ action, which does of course have a similar end in view, not to mention 15% for Action 4, ‘Youth workers and support systems’, and at least 4% for support for policy cooperation, which includes Youth Week.
Those who are any good at mental arithmetic will have figured out that some 24% of the overall budget is left over, and this is in order to give the Commission flexibility and to make it possible for more to be set aside for Youth Week in one year and to do more for voluntary service or direct youth exchange in another. It is vitally important that flexibility should be built in.
What we also require of the Commission, though, is that this programme be made less bureaucratic. We want the youth associations to be able to plan ahead with confidence, to be able to plan for periods of several years rather than for only one. We want them to get the money without delay and for no more than four months at the most to elapse between the application being made and the money being paid out. This sort of flexibility makes a positive impact on associations, particularly on the smaller youth associations, and enables us to achieve our objectives.
As you have mentioned, we want, as before, to prioritise the original age group for participants. The focus should therefore not be on the borderline cases, the thirteen and thirty-year-olds, who might perhaps be able to take part under special circumstances, but should, as before, be on the core group of those aged between 15 and 18.
We would like to see a rather larger budget; to give one example, I find it incredible that we, in the European Union, spend EUR 6.5 billion on subsidising sugar production, but, when it comes to learning throughout life, youth exchanges, and culture, our investment still amounts to peanuts. It is for that reason that Parliament advocates, for ‘Youth in Action’, an increase in funding and the relaxation of the constraints of the Böge report to EUR 1.128 billion. I regard that as modest enough, and we have to set down clear markers here.
Anti-discrimination policy and youth seminars get a good reception from young people and our amendments are intended to put them centre stage, along with the involvement of disadvantaged young people and the opportunity for all young people to participate, not merely theoretically, but also in practice, irrespective of their nationality or race, of their gender or sexual identity, of where they live, of what they do for a living, or even of whether they are out of work. This is about the building up of intellectual activity, linguistic skills and intercultural learning and their implementation in practice.
Ought young people not be at least as much worth to us as a fraction of what is spent on subsidising the cultivation of tobacco? I intend to make a nuisance of myself, particularly to the Council, for as long as it takes for a change of mind to kick in. It is not enough to conclude a Youth Pact; it also has to be implemented! That is the first step."@en1
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