Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-008"
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"en.20080422.3.2-008"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, President of the European Investment Bank, ladies and gentlemen, my first words will be to thank you, Mr Maystadt, for the excellent relationship you have built up with the MEPs on the Committee on Budgetary Control, which has made a significant contribution to enabling the report we are about to debate to be written. I would extend these thanks to your team of staff, and especially, Philippe de Fontaine Vive, Vice-President, with whom I was able to work in complete transparency at the Bank’s headquarters in Luxembourg.
You carry out your role, Mr Maystadt, with a great deal of competence, warmth, determination and courage, but also with wisdom and, I would add, with elegance.
The EIB, which was set up by the Treaty of Rome, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2008. Its members are the European Union Member States, and their finance ministers form its board of governors. Its mission is to contribute to the development of the common market, using the capital markets and its own funds. It is a Community instrument, but within it power is exercised intergovernmentally.
It is a good thing that citizens’ representatives are talking about these issues at a time when citizens themselves are demanding results from the European Union; they often benefit from the EIB’s services without realising it. First I would like to congratulate the Bank for its action, its ambitious plan of activities and projects; I particularly welcome the excellence of the new strategy for 2007–2009 including transparency, the reinforcement of added value and the gradual increase in risk-taking, activities for the benefit of SMEs and local government, the use of new financial instruments and the stepping-up of cooperation with the European Commission. The important role of the Bank in the neighbourhood policy should also be underlined, and the report calls more specifically for further development of the facility for Euro-Mediterranean investment and partnership, or FEMIP, within the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean policy.
I believe, however, that the time has come to go even further, faster and better, in terms of both control and support for the European Union in financing its investments. In terms of control mechanisms, I think the time has come to set up genuine control of banking regulation, and I suggest that the EIB itself apply to the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, based in London, to look at the conditions for this task of regulation and in particular decide who could carry it out in the regrettable absence of an official European banking regulator.
Concerning support for the European Union in financing investment, where needs have been estimated at EUR 600 billion for the trans-European transport networks alone, I suggest that a reflection be carried out on the role of the European Union in terms of the development of our territory. The funding allocated by the Member States and the EU is far from able to meet these needs. Is it not understandable, Commissioner, that the European Union should have difficulty finding EUR 3.4 billion to finance as strategic a project from an industrial, scientific and military point of view as Galileo, under these circumstances?
I suggest that, given the quality of the EIB’s human resources, its detachment and its experience of financing major infrastructure, the Commission gives it the task of carrying out a strategic study on the funding of investments, excluding no possible scenarios: subsidies, payment of sums subscribed by the Member States to the EIB’s capital, loans (including special loans from the Member States as provided for in Article 6 of the EIB’s Statute), innovative instruments such as risk sharing, loan guarantee instruments, financial engineering appropriate to long-term projects that are not immediately profitable according to market-based financial criteria, creation of an investment section within the European Union budget, financial consortia between European, national and local authorities, public-private partnerships, etc.
These, Mr President, Mr Maystadt, ladies and gentlemen, are the ideas put forward in this report. I look forward to hearing the debate that will follow and thank you for your attention."@en1
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