Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-18-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20060118.2.3-013"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Federal Chancellor – for a German Social Democrat, that form of address already has a wistfully nostalgic charm about it – I listened to you very carefully, and I must say that your speech was impressive, particularly the way it was presented. Listening to you, one has the impression that it is a real pleasure to sit on the European Council, that it is great to be President of the Council, a truly noble calling. But appearances are deceptive, as your own bitter experience has shown and as you will have realised from the outset. For this reason, we intend to look rather more closely at your role as President of this Council and at the results this Council has presented to us and then venture a comparison between what you have described as the necessary aims of your presidency and the financial reality against which these aims must be measured.
The European Parliament is ready to pursue with you the aims you have outlined, but with the necessary resources and structures. Let us negotiate on that. And you are right, Mr President of the Commission, when you say that Europe needs less grey and black. Europe also needs more red!
Before I proceed, however, there is something I have to comment upon. You must explain to me afterwards what the New Year concert had to do with the gas taps being turned off in Russia. Scarcely had the conductor raised his baton at the New Year concert, you told us, before they turned the gas down. And then the plot thickened: when the concert finished, you said, they turned it right down. We really must discuss this mysterious link between the New Year concert in Vienna and Russian gas supplies to Europe.
Chancellor, you identified three aims. You said that the people of Europe wanted growth and jobs. Yes, you are right there: growth and jobs. And the people of Europe do not want Mr Solana and Mrs Ferrero-Waldner to have to run round cap in hand when we want to engage in operations to stabilise the Gaza Strip, when we want to contribute to peace in the Middle East or whenever we seek to bring stability to the world’s troubled regions. It is undoubtedly correct to say that the citizens of Europe will be right behind us when the objectives adopted in Vienna last Sunday are propagated, namely an efficient fight against terrorism and an efficient European police force that can assist national police forces in combating organised crime. With measures like these, we are sure to win the backing of our citizens for the European project. That, indeed, was the reason why the European Parliament, in the Böge report on the Financial Perspective, put more growth and employment and greater security within Europe and in the wider world at the heart of its financial proposals.
Let us now compare our proposals with the decisions you reached in the Council – you included, Mr Schüssel – in December. For growth and employment, you proposed 35 billion less than Parliament; for internal security in the form of efficient cooperation between police forces, 7.8 billion less; for foreign policy, 12.8 billion less! In all of the areas you enumerated here as strategic tasks for your presidency, the Council made swingeing cuts, with the aid of your own vote. That is the true nature of the European crisis: your promises in the Council and the subsequent failure to deliver. That is Europe’s crisis.
Mr President of the Commission, let me turn now to you. I really must say that I fail to understand you. To loud applause in this House, you encouraged the British presidency of the Council to proceed in the very direction I have just described, which is, after all, our common policy. And in your budget proposal you called for even more money. Your Commission requested EUR 1 022 billion as the funding required for the performance of our tasks over the next seven years. At the end of the day, this is whittled away to 862 billion, a shortfall of 160 billion, which you then describe as a great success. That is what I cannot understand. We want an agreement, Mr Schüssel. We want Europe to be structured efficiently. It need not always involve more money. If no more resources can be mobilised, we have to accept that. But the expenditure structures must then be organised in such a way that the aims you described can be achieved. What we have achieved is an unchanged budgetary structure. Moreover, we now have Blair’s theorem, which has taken its place alongside that of Pythagoras. Tony Blair should truly be nominated for the Nobel Prize in mathematics for his theorem, which states that the decelerated increase of a sum is equal to the reduction of the sum – brilliant!
Since this year marks the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Chancellor, I reflected on the words of Osmin in his aria in Mozart’s marvellous opera
which are actually a good description of what the Council has been serving up to us. Osmin sings the following line, which fits the European Council like a glove: ‘All your tricks and all your wiles, all your schemes and all your guiles, there’s none that I know not.’
The European Parliament, however, must add the next part of the stanza: ‘But better ones are needed ere your victory’s conceded, for well I know what’s what’."@en1
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"Die Entführung aus dem Serail – The Abduction from the Seraglio –"1
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