Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-376"
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"en.20060517.24.3-376"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, with its adoption of the Financial Perspective today, the European Parliament has taken an important step towards enabling the structural programmes to begin in the regions of the EU as early as possible, in 2007. We shall take a further important step tomorrow by adopting our proposals on the strategic guidelines for cohesion policy. I should also like to take today’s opportunity to make it clear once more that Parliament accelerated the procedure tremendously by dealing with these guidelines in parallel with the negotiations on the Financial Perspective and the regulations on the funds, and I should like to thank all my fellow Members who are present for this debate, too. I apologise for the late hour, but it was the only chance of adopting this report before the end of the May session. Doing it any other way would have meant further delays to the overall handling of cohesion policy.
The Commission’s proposal is comprehensive. Nevertheless, I have some important proposals to supplement and strengthen the policy approaches. These are based on the fact that EU enlargement in 2004 has exacerbated the disparities between the regions and on the fact that we have to use the scant resources available in a strategically intelligent and efficient manner. That is why we must also make more intensive use of the opportunities for private cofinancing in the coming years.
What do I wish to emphasise in particular in my speech today? Firstly, in my view, we must make it clear that cohesion policy should naturally support the Lisbon Strategy, but we must not forget sustainable development of the EU in accordance with the Gothenburg objectives in the process. Secondly, as we know, 80% of the European population lives in cities or urban areas, which means that we have to place greater emphasis on this dimension of our strategy. Thirdly, we must enhance the element of territorial cohesion in our planning: a demand also rightly made by the Committee of the Regions. Within the Commission’s three guidelines – making Europe and its regions more attractive for investors and labour, promoting knowledge and innovation for growth, and more and better jobs – we support the development of a durable transport infrastructure, including in border areas. In this connection, we attach particular importance to the implementation of environmental priorities such as Natura 2000, the Water Framework Directive and the sustainable prevention of natural disasters.
We should like to draw attention to the particular prospects offered by the use of renewable energy and, with it, the development of new technologies in this field. The development of research infrastructures and the utilisation of the research results for SMEs is an important concern in our strategy, as is access to modern information and communication networks.
All of these points are related to the development of an economy that creates more and, particularly, better jobs in the EU. However, another very important prerequisite for jobs is that people living in the EU be as highly qualified as possible. In this connection, the lifelong learning strategy is central to our report, and we support programme approaches for children and young people and for the training of workers, and the access of the elderly, too, to education. I should like to make it clear that discrimination-free access to the EU cohesion policy must be guaranteed for the future in respect of all the priorities set out in the report, including, but not limited to, persons with disabilities. We want to be able to further use and develop the positive experiences gained with the old Community initiative EQUAL in the next subsidy period.
Social partners, and also organisations, associations and regional players, must be involved much more actively in drawing up the programme at regional level. Discussions with the Commission have revealed that a large number of our proposals can be incorporated into the Commission’s final proposal. This will enable us to take new strategic approaches to the work of the next seven years, which I warmly welcome. I should like to thank my fellow Members from the political groups for their broad support, and it only remains for me to call on the Council to adopt the whole package on cohesion policy as soon as possible. This way, we hope to reaffirm and reinforce the confidence of the European public in the solidarity of European policy."@en1
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