Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-13-Speech-1-123"
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"en.20060213.12.1-123"2
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".
Mr President, it would be very nice if we were able to throw endless amounts of money at our relatively poor East European neighbours, but history has shown that by doing that you do not make the poor rich, you simply make the rich poor. At an exhibition in Brussels put on by the Dutch Presidency, it was predicted that another ten poor European countries will be joining the EU by 2022: Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine. West Germany’s experience in pouring almost a thousand billion euro into East Germany shows what it costs to try to create a level playing field for a poor neighbour. The cost of giving State aid to all of these new Member States will be astronomical.
Currently the EU is spending over half its budget on State aid. Britain is far from rich as it is. We are being told that our government cannot afford to pay us a decent pension unless we work until we are 70. Our health service is seriously under funded and our navy, which is a fraction of the size it once was, can hardly afford to pay for the fuel it needs to go to sea.
Let us stop this crazy idea now before the so-called rich Member States end up totally impoverished. Instead, why do we not help to improve the economies of our European neighbours and of Third World countries by opening up free trade opportunities to them? If this enriches us all, as I think it will, individual Member States might then be in a position to help their neighbours financially; but charity should begin at home."@en1
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