Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-059"
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"en.20060316.6.4-059"2
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".
Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Thyssen, and the Members of Parliament and the members of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection for their excellent and close cooperation and the support they have expressed for the consumer programme.
We agree on the other issues, especially as regards the need to integrate consumer interests into other policies. I count on Parliament’s support to ensure that consumer interests are given proper attention in many other key consumer policy initiatives.
That is a brief overview of the Commission’s position on this issue. I look forward to a very interesting debate.
I would like to apologise in advance for repeating some things I have already said regarding the health part of the programme. However, given that we are having separate debates, it is important to make some statements again in relation to the consumer programme.
The problem of the budget is again a similar one: a reduced budget means reduced policies and, again, it means less money for the Union of 27 – 25 plus 2 – than we had for the 15.
In the age of consumer protection, where we have to take strong initiatives, especially in the new Member States and the acceding Member States, this will cause serious problems and will of course affect the assistance we offer to consumer organisations, especially as regards funding of projects and training of staff.
On the same issue, I would like to remind you again of the letter sent by President Barroso to President Borrell raising these concerns, explaining that if the compromise stays in place it would mean less money than we had in 2006 and asking for additional efforts in this area. Again, as in the health area, if eventually we are left with such a major cut or reduction in our funding, it will mean that we cannot spread it thinly over many actions. Limited funds mean we have to re-evaluate and prioritise and decide where we actually want to concentrate, where we can achieve the greatest benefit. I hope that this can be corrected, that eventually the funding will be provided and that we will be able to cover the programme as it was proposed.
On splitting the programmes, I have to repeat that I fully understand the position of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection in this respect. I understand why it would prefer to have two separate programmes. As I said earlier, we believe that there would be some added value if we adhered to a merged programme, where we clearly distinguish between actions in health and in consumer protection; but we can benefit from having common areas and achieve better economies of scale.
Nevertheless, given that the financial perspectives negotiations are still ongoing, this would and will affect the Commission’s position on the splitting of the programme. At this point, therefore, we cannot take a final decision regarding splitting and have to reject the amendments relating to splitting. On the conclusion of the debate on the financial perspectives, the Commission will review this issue again. I repeat that Parliament has made its wishes very clear and I have taken note of the very strong – almost unanimous – position of Parliament.
I shall not comment on the amendments separately. A full list of the Commission’s position on each of the amendments is being made available to Parliament and I should be obliged if it could be included in the Verbatim Report of this sitting.
The amendments we are rejecting relate mostly to the splitting, and we are doing so either for the reason I explained earlier or because they go beyond the scope of Community consumer policy. It is not that we disagree with the substance of these proposals, but that we feel they go a bit further than the scope of Community consumer policy and – given the existing situation – we would not be able to finance some of them."@en1
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